Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Is-ought dichotomy“

This article examines an allegedly Humean solution provided by J. Baird Callicott to the problem of the is/ought dichotomy. It also examines an allegedly Humean argument provided by him for the land ethic's summary moral precept. It concludes that neither the solution nor the argument is Humean or cogent.

Many interdisciplinary discussions seem to operate on a tacit assumption that the notions of character and personality can be used interchangeably. In order to argue that such an assumption is at least partly erroneous, the character–personality distinction drawn in various contexts is systematically scrutinized both in an historical and conceptual way. Then, in turn, two particular issues are addressed. The character–personality distinction is shown to be reliant on the dichotomy between value and fact, respectively, and to have a considerable functional dimension with some of the functions fulfilled by the notion of character (but not by that one of personality). The outcomes achieved, finally, are referred to the subtle differences between the fact–value distinction and the Humean is–ought dichotomy.

Abstract Has the emergence of post-positivism in philosophy of science changed the terms of the “is/ought” dichotomy? If it has demonstrated convincingly that there are no “facts” apart from the theoretical frames and evaluative standards constructing them, can such a cordon sanitaire really be upheld between “facts” and values? The point I wish to stress is that philosophy of science has had a central role in constituting and imposing the fact/value dichotomy and a revolution in the philosophy of science should not leave the dichotomy unaffected. The connection between post-positivism and naturalism will be my guiding thread in considering this “last dogma of positivism.” First this essay will specify the sense of naturalism that it will take to be essential to the post-positivist philosophy of science: the deflation of the notion of the “purity” of scientific knowledge. Then it will turn to the question of the implications that follow for the “autonomy” of ethics, including the danger posed by a new form of scientistic reductionism.

Is it possible for historical materialism to have a specific normative basis that allows the scientific aspects of Marx’s theory to be compatible with his political philosophy and ethics? No consensus has so far been reached on this question. The debate between the normative Marx and the non -normative Marx starts with an acknowledgement of a dichotomy between facts and value. In order to resolve this dichotomy, many studies tend to place value rather than facts at the heart of their arguments – they attempt to demonstrate that Marx explored issues of justice, equality, and liberty at the normative level. However, by drawing on John R. Searle’s answer to the Humean question of ‘is’ and ‘ought’, we can adopt a different approach to the study that puts facts, rather than values, at the heart of the argument. Under this approach, Marx’s analysis of the facts of estrangement, surplus-value, and the like, does not consist of factual statements that exclude value and the scientific theories that result from them. Rather, it consists of the statement of institutional facts that contain values. In Marx’s case, a fact-sensitive normative theory is fully possible.

The central fact about the problem of personal identity is that it is a problem posed by an apparent dichotomy: the dichotomy between the objective, third-person viewpoint on the one hand and the subjective perspective provided by the first-person viewpoint on the other. Everyone understands that the mind/body problem is precisely the problem of what to do about another apparent dichotomy, the duality comprising states of consciousness on the one hand and physical states of the body on the other. By contrast, contemporary discussions of the problem of personal identity generally display little or no recognition of the divide which to my mind is at the heart of the problem. As a consequence, there has been a relentlessly third-personal approach to the issue, and the consequent proposal of solutions which stand no chance at all of working. I think the idea that the problem is to be clarified by an appeal to the idea of a human being is the latest manifestation of this mistaken approach. I am thinking in particular of the claim that what ought to govern our thinking on this issue is the fact that human beings constitute a natural kind, and that standard members of this kind can be said to have some sort of essence. Related to this is the idea that ‘person’, while not itself a natural kind term, is not a notion which can be framed in entire independence of this natural kind.

It is widely accepted that the relationships of dominance between the self and the other are concurrent to both the Gothic genre and postcolonial theory. In Gothic literature this relationship has traditionally been expressed through the dichotomy self vs. other, in which the self is the male protagonist while the latter is “everything else in that world” (Day 19), Gothic literature being, thus, an exploration of the formation of identity. In colonial Gothic this is brought under the axiom colonizer-colonized, and, therefore, characters are analysed as manifestations of a dichotomy which usually links first the other to the monstrous, who is subsequently presented as the colonized subject. The Irish case further complicates this simple binary relation. The running argument of the present paper is that far from being a dichotomy, the Irish case is better understood as a triangle in which two of its vertices are fixed—Catholics/Irish and English—while the third vertex, that of the Anglo-Irish, gradually shifts positions from the English to the Irish one, following a creolization process in which they are both victims and victimizers. The characters in the fictions of J.S. Le Fanu all epitomize this constrained relationship, displaying an array of roles who do not comfortably fit into either category, showing a pervading feeling of being ill-at-ease. As this paper shows, a deeper reading reveals these figures to be just the opposite of what the prototypical colonialist figure ought to be—weak and feeble, terrorized rather than terrorizer, in awe of the other instead of subduing it.

In response to the essays by Bauckham, Byrskog, Schröter, and Zimmermann concerning “memory”, Le Donne summarizes and critiques four different applications of mnemonic studies to the Jesus tradition. The author notes the different approaches to sociology relative to memory and argues that both autobiographical memory and collective memory fall under the wider category of social memory. Moreover, contra Bauckham social memory is helpful avenue of study for historical Jesus research once properly understood. Contra Schröter, he argues that the study of the social components of autobiographical memory ought to play a part in scholarship concerning the Gospels. He also challenges the false dichotomy between the “remembered Jesus” and the “historical Jesus” as posed by Zimmermann.

Nowadays we use vehicle registration plate numbers increasingly frequently, e.g. for parking in paid parking zones or when using recordings from private on-board cameras. The processing of registration numbers can have a significant impact on the rights and freedoms of every citizen; therefore, it is essential to unambiguously determine whether vehicle registration plate numbers ought to be classified as personal data. This issue is varyingly interpreted by the case law of Polish courts and by the President of the Office for Personal Data Protection. This debate boils down to the question of whether we are able to identify a given individual based solely on a vehicle registration plate number. Administrative courts, as a rule, state that registration plates do not constitute personal data due to the fact that registration numbers identify a vehicle, not an individual. However, the President of the Office for Personal Data Protection is of a contrasting opinion, believing that indirect identification allows us to determine the owner of a vehicle based solely on the registration plate number.

In his article ‘An Ameliorative Analysis of the Concept of Education’, Jack Marley-Payne sets out to provide an ameliorative analysis of the concept ‘education’. Marley-Payne draws an important distinction between what he labels the ‘Broad’ and the ‘Narrow’ account of education. His conclusion is that an ameliorative conceptual analysis of education favours the narrow account. The main argument is that a narrow approach, tightly connected to formal schooling, provides a better basis for pursuing an egalitarian agenda. Contrary to Marley-Payne, I will argue that an amelioration of the concept education need not favour either a wide notion or a narrow notion. I believe that there are other alternatives to choose from, that in fact leads to an amelioration of what education can and ought to mean. The problem with Marley-Payne’s conclusion is thus, not only that it builds upon a false dichotomy but also that it is not emancipatory enough. We need an amelioration that is inclusive rather than exclusive.

Dickens could never get rid of his everlasting catching style even though the very novel has been said to be one of his maturities. The style is there with more repetition and mock. The latter is not obvious to readers; it is dramatically welded to the circumstances, bizarre, rare but not alien to commoners of the very epoch. One of the most stunning texts and range of words, wordiness and elements within contexts alluding, saying but revealing the hidden, forbidden and the taboo, is the introduction of his novel A Tale of the Two Cities. In the following excerpts taken from Bleak House, the introduction is dense and irregularly shaped in English: the very language of his and her majesty. Wherein the question poses itself and raises the discrepancies among form and content; a dichotomy that ought to be considered in conducting the investigation of style and stylistics upon the forthcoming texts. Keywords: Dickens, stylistics, narrative, techniques, Bleak House.

Dickens could never get rid of his everlasting catching style even though the very novel has been said to be one of his maturities. The style is there with more repetition and mock. The latter is not obvious to readers; it is dramatically welded to the circumstances, bizarre, rare but not alien to commoners of the very epoch. One of the most stunning texts and range of words, wordiness and elements within contexts alluding, saying but revealing the hidden, forbidden and the taboo, is the introduction of his novel A Tale of the Two Cities. In the following excerpts taken from Bleak House, the introduction is dense and irregularly shaped in English: the very language of his and her majesty. Wherein the question poses itself and raises the discrepancies among form and content; a dichotomy that ought to be considered in conducting the investigation of style and stylistics upon the forthcoming texts. Keywords: Dickens, stylistics, narrative, techniques, Bleak House.

ABSTRACT:The relationship between culture and corruption has been the focus of various studies, producing inconsistent results. We suggest that these inconsistencies might be due to the conceptualization and measurement of culture. Drawing on the possible value/fact dichotomy discussed in ethical philosophy, we introduce the construct of cultural discrepancy—the difference between cultural values (“ought”) and practices (“is”)—as a predictor of pervasive (i.e., fully institutionalized and predictable) and arbitrary (i.e., uncertain and relatively unorganized) corruption. Examining the relationship between the discrepancies observed in the GLOBE cultural dimensions and the Corruption Perception Index shows that in-group collectivism discrepancy is negatively related to pervasive corruption; future orientation discrepancy is positively related to arbitrary corruption. Further, we show that these relationships are contingent on national wealth. The negative relationship for in-group collectivism discrepancy is most pronounced in poor and moderately wealthy countries, and the positive relationship for future orientation discrepancy is most pronounced in rich countries.

As an exercise in African philosophy, this paper examines and demonstrates the limitations of the two popular extremes in disability studies, namely, the medical and social models of disability. While the former is essentialist in rendering disability as a fixed condition and as an individual problem to be confronted with medical intervention, the latter identifies it as a social problem that requires social intervention. The paper employs the methods of hermeneutics, critical and conceptual analyses to facilitate an understanding that, within the context of Yorùbá belief, disability goes beyond the realm of human beings and involves the active participation of Yorùbá deities, especially Òrìṣà-ńlá or Ọbàtálá. Consequently, it questions the assumptions associated with the recognition of the dichotomy between “normality” and “abnormality” and confronts the mystical and/or mythographic representation of ẹni-òòṣà or persons with disabilities with a view to offering new insights into how persons with disabilities ought to be conceptualized in order to promote their inherent human dignity.

This paper deals with the distinction between law and fact. In the article ‘The myth of the law-fact distinction’ (Allen and Pardo, 2003a), Ronald Allen and Michael Pardo argue that there is no ontological, epistemological or analytical distinction between law and fact. Instead, they claim that the distinction ought to be understood pragmatically, by considering whether the judge or jury is in the best position to decide the question. The problem with this is that it does not add to the understanding. In a soon-forgotten passus they suggest that the distinction is between legal and non-legal facts, rather than between law and fact. In this paper I revise the article by Ron and Pardo and make an argument in favour of the distinction between legal and non-legal facts. The notion of ‘legal’ and ‘non-legal’ underlines the fact that the dichotomy is relevant specifically from a legal point of view. In the legal context different consequences apply to law and fact, the same is not true in a non-legal context.

This article analyzes the vision of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as a narrative riff on Kant’s three basic questions. The novel shows what it means to live out “What can I know?” “What ought we do?” and “What may we hope?” It argues that this approach, combined with a rejection of the modernist dichotomy of “faith vs. reason,” overcomes the problems many critics see in the text. Ivan lives out a “first critique materialism”; Zosima and Alyosha show how to live out a “revised second critique solidarity”; the evolution of Grushenka and Dmitri—both “different people” in the final third of the novel than they were earlier—demonstrates “what we may hope.” Dostoevsky does, despite some critics’ claims, offer realistic responses to Ivan’s profound challenges to faith in the often-excerpted chapters, “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor.” The essay suggests that the lessons the novel teaches are applicable in our own world, where grace is also fragile. Grace can be rejected, as it is by Ivan, yet also be found in and through flawed vessels like Zosima, Alyosha, Grushenka, and Dmitri.

This paper investigates the challenges of Nigeria’s federalism in comparison with that of the United States of America. Federalism to both Nations can explicitly be referred to as the devolution of powers from the center to the component units. While federalism can be traced back to the pre-independent Nigeria of 1914, it is more pronounced by Governor General Bourdillon in 1939 when the three provinces were created. Meanwhile, the United States of America is among the oldest federalism in the world. For the purpose of this study, the two Federations were compared alongside each other by adopting the secondary sources of data. The paper explicitly shows that both Nations seemingly have a lot of fascinating resemblance in terms of their core and peripheral representations. Each country with its peculiarity, but the semblance of indigene-settler dichotomy is a common problem to both Nations. For Nigeria, the indigene-settler dichotomy is a highly volatile issue, just like the black American-white/native American segregation that threatens national integration and unity of the United States of America, and both factors affect the operation of federalism and the attainment of national cohesion in multi-ethnic Countries. Constitutionally, both Countries gave an explicit explanation on who is a citizen and what makes one a citizen, but no further classifications of “indigeneity.” Discriminatory treatments are consistently meted out to “non-indigenes,” where they often denied certain privileges that ought to be accessible to all citizens. Given the above submissions, there is no doubt that these crises are deeply rooted in historical and socio-political underpinnings and are probably the most sensitive subject in both nations' public life and contributed to a circle of violence that often distorts National security. As such, if not resolved, it can threaten the very social fabric of both countries.

One of the most important tenets of relativism is the fact-value dichotomy which holds that it is impossible to make judgements about good and bad from the experience of everyday life. Phenomena can tell us only what is happening; they cannout guide us in deciding how things should happen. The facts exist in the world experience, and judgements about the facts derive wholly from our wills. Thus, the values we adopt are entirely a free choice. Since all people have free will, every value choice is as good as any other.Law & Order challenges this supposition. Most plots begin with the discovery of a crime, usually a murder. Neither the police investigating the crime nor the audience has any idea why the mideed was committed or who did it. As the police look for clues, the truth slowly unfolds. Often there are false leads and the wrong person is arrested. Yet, when the truth becomes clear, it is evident who has perpetrated the offense and how he or she ought to be punished. The facts are all important in deciding what is true and therefore just. In effect, the facts quite clearly establish the "values."

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>The term “natural” is employed to describe a wide range of novel interactive products and systems, ranging from ges- ture-based interaction to brain-computer interfaces and in marketing as well as in research. However, this terminology is problematic. It establishes an untenable dichotomy be- tween forms of interaction that are natural and those that are not; it draws upon the positive connotations of the term and conflates the language of research with marketing lingo, often without a clear explanation of why novel interfaces can be considered natural; and it obscures the examination of the details of interaction that ought to be the concern of HCI researchers. We are primarily concerned with identify- ing the problem, but also propose two steps to remedy it: recognising that the terminology we employ in research has consequences, and unfolding and articulating in more detail the qualities of interfaces that we have hitherto labelled “natural”. </span></p></div></div></div>

Abstract:In a recent paper Allen Buchanan makes a basic distinction between two types of ethical problems which arise in business: “genuine ethical dilemmas, in which the problem is to discover what one ought to do, when two or more valid ethical duties (or values or principles) conflict, and compliance problems, which occur when one knows what one’s moral obligations are, but experiences difficulty in fulfilling them due to pressures of self-interest or loyalty to group or organization.” Buchanan argues that most business ethicists believe that this simple dichotomy is exhaustive. He claims it is not and argues that there is a third area of concern that involves perfecting imperfect duties, or coming to “have definite ethical duties, where before there were at best vague ethical goals.” However, I wish to argue that there is a further area of concern in business ethics and this area does not involve deciding between competing moral principles, values etc, attempting to comply with known principles, or imparting determinate content to vague, non-specific imperfect principles of obligation (the subject of Buchanan’s recent paper). This sort of problem occurs frequently in the third world in circumstances in which the agent entirely fails to recognize the normative structure that underpins the considered options.

This paper discusses the impact of changing ecological contexts on socialization, utilizing qualitative data obtained from 42 mothers of 3–4 year old children, in five communities in Israel. In depth interviews explored mothers' developmental goals concerning valued characteristics for their young boys and girls and valued goals for their children as adults. Similarities and differences in gender-related expectations are discussed in relation to cultural scripts. One major finding in this study is the great similarity between themes mothers used to describe the characteristics they valued in their young children and the themes that emerge from their descriptions of their long-term developmental goals for these children. Our study challenges the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism as a unit of analysis of parental socialization goals and suggests that parents' goals in different cultural communities ought to be characterized not only in relation to the underlying cultural scripts of their community but also in relation to: (a) the level of exposure to eco-cultural change; (b) the specific social structure of the community, or socio-cultural group, undergoing such a change; (c) the community's, or individual's attitude towards such a change; and (d) the host culture excluding or including attitudes.

It may be nearly impossible to use standard principles to make a decision about a complex ethical case. The best decision, say virtue ethicists in the Aristotelian tradition, is often one that is made by a person of good character who knows the salient facts of the case and can frame the situation appropriately. In this respect ethical decisions and strategic decisions are similar. Rationality plays a role in good ethical decision-making, but virtue ethicists emphasize the importance of intuitions and emotions as well.Virtue ethics suggests a reconciliation of the factual and the normative. Virtues may explain as well as justify actions. The same is true of other psychological states and events. That psychological terms have normative implications does not render them useless in explanation. As Aristotle does not distinguish cleanly between the normative and empirical, so many moral philosophers today reject the is-ought dichotomy. They are prepared to learn from economists, psychologists, and other empirical scientists who offer information about the nature of the good life and of values. Social psychologists who study community or corporate culture suggest a close relationship between organizational and ethical features, much as Aristotle saw a close relationship between politics and ethics. We should infer from all this that in business ethics there is good reason for philosophers and organization scholars to work closely together.

Purpose This paper aims to stimulate discussion on how best to protect individuals from undue influence when gifting to religious institutions in England and Wales. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on the law relating to undue influence in England and Wales and draws from the literature regarding gifting to religious institutions and accountability of such institutions. Findings This paper identifies that more needs to be done to protect individuals, so as to ensure they are gifting to religious institutions using their own free will. It highlights that although the law attempts to define undue influence, there is little guidance on where the line between persuasion and coercion lies. The paper recognises that religious institutions need to do more to adopt safeguarding policies and that the Charity Commission ought to better support such policies by creating a single point of reference. Practical implications Steps need to be taken to prepare a cohesive set of principles that religious institutions of all denominations can follow to ensure they protect themselves from being accused of undue influence, as well as safeguarding individuals from abuse. Originality/value There are limited studies that consider the dichotomy between religious gifting and undue influence. This paper adds to the existing discussion and considers ways in which individuals can be protected. The author is not aware of such considerations being directly contemplated as resolutions to this issue.

Since its beginning, healthcare has focused its attention on helping patients become healthier and live longer. One of the areas in which medical technology has made impressive strides is assisted reproductive technologies. Some bioethical issues are common to most or all of these newer reproductive technologies. The uncertainty of long-term risks posed by reproductive technologies generate potential challenges to the values of beneficence and non-maleficence and strain the already divisive dichotomy between procreative autonomy and procreative beneficence. Procreative autonomy and procreative beneficence are both important values that physicians and prospective parents ought to evaluate when considering the use of assisted reproductive technologies. However, the moral prescriptives associated with each value may diverge and conflict with one another; when this occurs, minute arguments may shift the balance between them. For physicians, prioritizing the value of procreative autonomy or procreative beneficence mainly influences the way in which they choose to present information–that is, whether they are directive or non-directive when consulted about family-planning options. Assisted reproductive technologies have dramatically increased the range of choices available to prospective parents, and this breadth of choice may lead to potential ethical conflicts between the competing values of procreative autonomy and procreative beneficence. In the following article, we will address this friction, focusing our attention on normative considerations related to medical risk management and the telos of the prospective child.

The article takes a renewed interest in the artistic practices of the 1980s in Slovenia, aiming to build bridges between individual actors of the 1980s alternative scene in Ljubljana and to account for certain actors, who have been up to now lacking in interpretations of this period, and related phenomena ought nevertheless to be included in this narrative. By analysing new cultural phenomena, the article shows that one of the crucial vectors is a revision of the conception, perception and use of the public. Punk, as a catalyst for new social, cultural and artistic phenomena, is here understood as an ideological rather than aesthetic position. The contribution thus analyses the spectrum of tactics and strategies that enabled a specific cultural interregnum to inhabit the dissolving context of late-Yugoslav socialism. The conceptual framework given here perverts the traditional theatrical dichotomy between performers and audience, as performance suddenly includes everyone: urban space is transformed into performative materiality and theatrical semiotics. Space understood in this way, in which a multiplication of bodies can be perceived, can be thought of as a space of a different type of politics and can be sensitivized anew. To actualize punk’s starting points within the horizon of a new policy, what is needed is a spectrum of differences, i.e. regimes of corporeality, with which choreographic and dance practices are manifested as a proactive partner in an opening up of the public.

Needs assessment is regarded as a powerful tool for addressing the needs for a program, and for various other purposes including strategic planning for resource allocation, priority setting, and improving the course of an ongoing program. As such, it is portrayed as an ideal and necessary step in policymaking. On the other hand, however, there are some growing concerns about the actual needs assessment practice which is believed by many to be prejudicing the performance of countless policies and programs. Hence, looking into this dichotomy of views and the way social needs are actually assessed are of particular interest. The present contribution seeks to delve deep into the technique of needs assessment and to give an insight on what ought to be done in the field and what is being done in fact. A systematic literature search was conducted to identify and analyze all available research studies that address the function of needs assessment, the problem definition in need assessment, the identification and classification of needs, the definition, description, and specification of target populations, and the description of the nature of service needs. The content of the relevant sections in each study was then read and reread with the aim of determining how social needs are assessed indeed. The result has shown that needs, their identification, and the way they are met, are in most cases determined by experts and agencies, not the needy populations. The search has also revealed the existence of significant gaps between the needs identified by professionals and those seen as important by the people who they are supposed to benefit. Finally, the result suggests that experts and agencies’ definition and identification of needs or target populations only reflect their own views or choices of program activity and the reasons they brandish in seeking for funding.

The article explores the formulation of the criminal defence of necessity in the context of murder cases. The discussion will provide a medium through which to critique necessity's theoretical foundations which are classified either as one of justification or excuse. It is this highly problematic distinction which will be exposed as not only having been overlooked in case law but is futile where necessity is considered as providing a murder defence. Such a theoretical dichotomy does not reflect the competing rights and values present in the case law, and nor does it align with the decision-making process taken by judges in cases where they resolve such moral conflicts. What is present is a contextual form of necessity that frames and recognises the circumstances the actors are placed in. The analysis argues for a recategorisation of necessity into a narrow fact-driven category beyond the abstract duality of justification or excuse. To support the view of a situation-led approach, necessity is exposed as omitting a critical doctrinal element; that of the imminence of harm within a broader recognition that the situation presents an emergency. Adopting a comparative perspective, the article analyses why the emphasis placed on the imminence of harm found in Canadian jurisprudence ought to be reflected in English law. The rationale for this is to fully reflect the agony of the circumstances that underpin the scope of necessity in murder situations and to ensure that actors in such tragic situations have their rights secured as far as possible, before allowing the defence to apply. One of the final implications of the article is a reconsideration of the relationship between necessity and duress of circumstances arguing that a reappraisal of their convergence is required. The article's argument leaves the juridical precept that duress is not available as a defence to murder on an insecure foundation and in need of judicial re-evaluation.

One of the paradoxes facing conservative Muslims in North America is that whiletheir apologetic literature stresses “Islam as justice” – that justice is the paradigmaticQur’anic virtue after piety – in the eyes of the general public the progressiveMuslims have claimed the mantle of justice. This is a shame, since conservative ortraditionalMuslims are held to be generally unjust, whereas, as followers of Islam’straditional teachings, they ought to be at the forefront of the struggle for social andeconomic justice. There are two dimensions to this perception: one is externallygenerated and constitutes a very real threat to NorthAmerica’sMuslims; the secondone is internally generated and constitutes a significant barrier to Islam’s positivereception by NorthAmerican society.It is not an original statement to note that Islam’s general public image is bad.Many scholars, among them Edward Said, Karim Karim, and Jack Shaheen, havedemonstrated time and again how the western legacy of Orientalism moved out ofthe academy and into the secular media with the rise of the film and print mediaindustries. Such post-9/11 experts as Mahmoud Hamdani have noted the refining ofthis image into a “good Muslim”/“bad Muslim” dichotomy. The secular or “moderate”Muslims receive the accolade of the “good Muslims,” while traditional andconservativeMuslims are the “badMuslims.” Efforts by Daniel Pipes and other neoconservativewriters to ensure that the general public and policy makers do not distinguishbetween moderate conservatives and those who endorse violence to achievetheir goals have, unfortunately, been very successful.The Clarion Fund’s mass mailing of the DVD “Radical Obsession” to 28 millionhouseholds in September 2008 clarifies the enormous power behind such neoconservativegoals. “Radical Obsession,” which purports to be only about jihadism,manages through its imagery to connect allMuslims to violence.An excellently executedpiece of propaganda, it will likely have the desired goal: creating fear in thegeneral public’s mind about conservative Muslims. (Secular and progressiveMuslims will also suffer in the long run, as the general public will not be able to distinguishbetween a secular and a non-secular Muslim, which is why the supportvoiced by some of these Muslims vis-à-vis the DVD is disappointing, to say the least.) ...

This article will address descriptive and normative concepts vis-à-vis their inferential value and epistemic evolution within the social sciences. The analysis focuses mainly on the normative concept, which arises in the intersection between various disciplines of the social sciences, blending within itself a dialectic between the subjective and the objective, between the individual and the social. The descriptive concept – which acts as a link between logos qua language and the empirical reality – will have less elaborated analysis. The article’s purpose is convenient for readers acquainted with the field in question as well as those for whom the topic is less known. Indeed, the article is intended to address the above concepts from the point of view of the political scholar. However, during the research process, it was considered appropriate that these conceptions have an interdisciplinary heuristic reflection in order to be of value and interest to scholars of political science, philosophy, and law. As a first step, we will present in classical form the meaning and explanation of the concepts in question, based on linguistic and philosophical dictionaries. The article also focuses on the solid definition given to the concept of normativity – understood in legal terms – by Hans Kelsen through his idea of a Base Norm (Grundnorm) and his critique of Max Weber’s sociological conception of norms. Secondly, we will outline the dichotomy between the concepts of “is” and “ought” – the former analyzed by Kant as a hypothetical imperative, as a determinant of goals and actions based on desires and, the latter considered as a categorical imperative, as a normative determinant based on reason. Another dimension of normativity is seen from the perspective of analytical jurisprudence, the dialectic created between formalists and anti-formalists in the treatment of morality, both in subjective and social terms. Finally, the emphasis will be placed on normativity in politics and in spoken language, dimensions that define the normative approach.

Abstract: This article is both a review of the excellent book ‘Nudge and the Law. A European Perspective’, edited by Alberto Alemanno and Anne-Lise Sibony, and an assessment of the major themes and challenges that the behavioural analysis of law will and should face in the immediate future. The book makes important and novel contributions in a range of topics on both a theoretical and a substantial level. Regarding theoretical issues, four themes stand out: First, it highlights the differences between the EU and the US nudging environments. Second, it questions the reliance on expertise in rulemaking. Third, it unveils behavioural trade-offs that have too long gone unnoticed in behavioural law and economics. Fourth, it discusses the requirement of the transparency of nudges and the related concept of autonomy. Furthermore, the different authors discuss the impact of behavioural regulation on a number of substantial fields of law: health and lifestyle regulation, privacy law, and the disclosure paradigm in private law. This article aims to take some of the book’s insights one step further in order to point at crucial challenges – and opportunities – for the future of the behavioural analysis of law. In the past years, the movement has gained tremendously in breadth and depth. It is now time to make it scientifically even more rigorous, e.g., by openly embracing empirical uncertainty and by moving beyond the neo-classical/behavioural dichotomy. Simultaneously, the field ought to discursively readjust its normative compass. Finally and perhaps most strikingly, however, the power of big data holds the promise of taking behavioural interventions to an entirely new level. If these challenges can be overcome, this article argues, the intersection between law and behavioural sciences will remain one of the most fruitful approaches to legal analysis, in Europe and beyond. Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel ist sowohl eine Rezension des ausgezeichneten Buchs „Nudge and the Law. A European Perspective“, herausgegeben von Alberto Alemanno und Anne-Lise Sibony, als auch eine Analyse der wichtigsten Themen und Herausforderungen, denen sich die verhaltensökonomische Analyse des Rechts in der unmittelbaren Zukunft stellen muss. Das Buch beinhaltet wichtige und neuartige Beiträge in einer Reihe von Feldern, sowohl im methodisch-analytischen als auch im materiell-rechtlichen Bereich. In Bezug auf methodisch-analytische Fragen stechen vier Themen heraus: Erstens ist es Verdienst des Buchs, die Unterschiede zwischen der EU und den USA hinsichtlich der politisch-ökonomischen „nudging-Umgebung“ hervorzuheben. Zweitens stellt es die Abhängigkeit von Expertenwissen bei der Rechtssetzung in Frage. Drittens bringt es verhaltenswissenschaftlich bedingte Abwägungen (behavioral trade-offs) zum Vorschein, die zu lange in der verhaltensökonomischen Analyse des Rechts unbemerkt geblieben sind. Viertens erörtert es die Forderung der Transparenz von nudges und das damit verbundene Konzept der Autonomie. Darüber hinaus diskutieren die verschiedenen Autoren die Auswirkungen von Verhaltensregulierung auf eine Reihe von spezifischen Bereichen des Rechts: Gesundheit und Lifestyle-Regulierung, Datenschutzrecht, und das Informationsmodell im Privatrecht. Dieser Artikel soll einige der Einsichten des Buchs konzeptionell weiterentwickeln, um die entscheidenden Herausforderungen – und Chancen – für die Zukunft der verhaltensökonomischen Analyse des Rechts zu benennen. In den vergangenen Jahren hat diese Strömung enorm an Breite und Tiefe gewonnen. Es ist jetzt an der Zeit, sie wissenschaftlich noch stringenter zu machen, indem sie zum Beispiel offen empirische Unsicherheit konfrontiert und sich von der engen Dichotomie Neoklassik-Verhaltensökonomik emanzipiert. Gleichzeitig sollte das Feld diskursiv seinen normativen Kompass neu ausrichten. Vielleicht am bedeutsamsten ist jedoch schließlich, dass die Mac

Full TextIn contemporary, North American society, what it means to be ‘human’ is often taken for granted; in other words, ‘humanness’ is usually accepted as a readily knowable, uncomplicated and stable aspect of social reality. Ivone Gebara argues that because we believe that we already know the meaning of ‘humanness,’ reflecting on this notion often appears to be of little interest, need or value. “Since we imagine that everyone already knows what a [‘human’] is, we might have the feeling that we are wasting our time on notions that are already familiar, and that we ought to be seeking solutions to the urgent problems that [currently] face us” (Gebara, 1999: 67). Like Gebara, I argue that the concept of ‘human,’ is not ‘natural,’ stable or straightforward, rather it is a culturally-specific and historical invention, one intimately implicated within contemporary, environmental problems. In other words, although the category of human is often understood as readily comprehensible and fundamentally elevated above, and detached from, nature and ‘more-thanhuman’I beings, I maintain that the human subject is positioned within what I will term ‘the web of life,’ that is, the worldwide, ecological community which encompasses both human and more-than-human subjects. I believe the term, ‘becoming’ is a useful adjective to describe the human; becoming allows us to consider the human not as a natural or stable entity, but as one which is emerging and transforming in relation to environmental and social contexts. As a being situated within an ecological web of life, the human is not distinct from nature and more-than-human animals, but exists and changes in continuous relation to them. Long before the onset of European colonization of what is now considered North America, various dualisms permeated the European, historical imagination. Within this worldview, aspects of these dichotomies were understood to exist in fundamental distinction from one another; that is, not only were divisions of each dualism conceptualized as inherently disconnected and independent, but one aspect of each dichotomy was always understood as naturally and intrinsically superior to the other. Sallie McFague argues that the primary dualism within this imagination was the conceptualization of ‘reason’ and ‘nature’ as fundamentally distinct entities, in which reason was positioned in hierarchical relation to nature. However, this dichotomy has been broadened to represent, incorporate and interconnect with multiple other dichotomies, including, spirit/body, male/female, reason/ emotion, and human/nature (McFague, 1997: 88). According to McFague, “the [reason/nature] dualism illuminates most of the other dualisms: whatever falls on the top side of a dualism has connections with ‘reason,’ and whatever falls on the bottom side is seen as similar to ‘nature’” (1997: 88). In this sense, the projection of these constructions onto seemingly-different aspects of reality, including ‘different’ bodies, functioned to hierarchically organize both European society and the universe at large. It is important to recognize that because these dualisms were constructions of a very particular and ethnocentric group within European history, namely elite, white men, such subjects were also imagined to embody the superior aspects of various dichotomies; in other words, characteristics associated with reason were presumed to adhere to white, European males (McFague, 1997: 88). Within this imagination, the rational capacities and spiritual natures of white, masculine and European humans were imagined to prevent them from being confined by or to their bodies, or influenced by emotional or sexual responses. Importantly, because such racialized and gendered subjects were the only subjects envisioned to embody these and other superior dimensions of various dualisms, white, European men were positioned as the ideal modes of humanness within a great chain of being. In this sense, as the white, European masculine subject was assumed to embody humanness, subjects who were constructed to embody the opposing dimensions of these dichotomies were regarded as his nonhuman Others. Arguably, as the human was constructed to embody whiteness, masculinity and European ancestry, his Other may be regarded as the colonized, non-white woman. Through her gendered, racialized and cultural difference from the human, she was constructed to embody characteristics he did not. According to this dualistic relationship of interconnected difference(s), because she embodied matter, or solely bodily existence, she possesses neither inherent consciousness nor spirituality allowed by such consciousness. Because she was conceptualized as the Other to the sole, normative human, she was categorized as nonhuman. In this sense, it may be recognized how there has existed a significant, conceptual connection between non-white women and nature, as both were understood as nonhuman material beings in relation to the European, white man, who was presumed to embody true humanness. Through this ideology of the normative human subject, women and nature are conceptually demoted to a subordinate position because of what they are assumed to be (Primavesi, 1991: 142). However, this connection between nature and Aboriginal women is not only ideological: because both are regarded to exist in solely material form, and therefore to lack spiritual natures or capacities for consciousness, various manifestations of colonial violence against both nature and Aboriginal women have been historically disregarded, undermined or recognized as justified. This construction of the masculine human subject as the one who alone inhabits higher realms of reason and spirit served to legitimize and stabilize future social and religious structures of subordination and dominance. Women and nature have been placed under male domination and rule by the compelling and authoritative force of this prevailing ideology (Primavesi, 1991: 142-147). Within contemporary, North American academe, this historical, European construction of the human has been greatly interrogated, denaturalized and critiqued by postcolonial, critical race and psychoanalytic theorists, including Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter, among many others. Within their theories, great energy is focused on how the articulation of humanness has, and continues to affect subjects who have been historically excluded by this rigid definition at the level of social, emotional, psychic and bodily realities. These theorists are correct in their assertions that the purpose of the human construction was to reduce the modes of being, embodied by nonwhite and non-European/nonwestern subjects, in order to elevate the mode of being embodied by their cultural Others. However, it must be recognized that there exists a subtle, but continued, hierarchical and dualistic relationship between human and nonhuman within these theories. Not only do human beings continue to be understood as stably and inherently different from nonhuman beings, principally animals, but human experiences of colonial violence, and therefore, human modes of being, are essentially recognized as more significant than the modes of being and lived realities of more-than-human beings. In fact, as the conflation of racialized humans with more-thanhumans is articulated as undermining the violence experienced by such human subjects, violence against animals and nature, in such forms as human invasion, objectification, exploitation and voracious consumption, is disregarded as violence per se. Gebara calls this trend an anthropocentric “hierarchicalizing of knowing [that actually] runs parallel to the hierarchicalizing of society, [which is] itself a characteristic of the patriarchal world” (1999: 25). In this sense, within such criticism, there is an attempt to destabilize one conception of the boundary between human and nonhuman, while a second human/nonhuman dualism is (re)produced and supported; ultimately, the traditional border, employed in colonial fantasies to distinguish what counts as (a) human and what does not, is kept intact. These attempts to distinguish the human, along with having a colonial genealogy, are built on the assumption of a distinct sphere in which humans act, and blind to ideas of significant interconnection and interdependence: dimensions of each dualism are considered not only unrelated to, but to actually oppose, one another. However, each element of social reality is constructed in relation to others; in other words, every aspect of each dichotomy involves a reference to that which is supposedly opposite, distinct from, or Other to, the primary category (See Hewitt Suchocki, 1982). In this sense, all aspects of the dichotomies require reference beyond them in order to develop as intelligible categories and, therefore, cannot be understood, or even exist, outside the relationships within which they are implicated (Hewitt Suchocki, 1982: 6—7). More importantly, there are material interrelationships that are not captured by these dichotomies. As an example we can think of contemporary environmental threats, such as global warming and Colony Collapse Disorder in North America, that illustrate how humans are not ultimately separate from nature, but dependent on it for our survival, and that ‘natural’ phenomena has the potential to powerfully and disastrously affect humans. In this sense, it must be recognized that there is danger within denial: by assuming that we are not part of nature, we ultimately deny the significance of ecological problems on their own bodies and lived realities. However, I think it necessary at this point to remark on the (neo)colonial anthropo-centrism within many conceptions of human/nature relationality. Similar to the consciousness of more-than-human animals, when ecological problems are recognized as problems per se, and especially, when such issues are recognized to transcend the human/nature divide and create an impact in the lives of humans, such problems tend to be understood in human terms. In other words, nature often becomes the subject of human attention, concern, and care when humans acknowledge the fact that we are intimately related to, and ultimately dependent on, the earth for our survival and wellbeing, and that by abusing and destroying nature and more-than-human subjects, humans ultimately bring about their own destruction. Although within such types of care, the interrelatedness among all beings within the web of life is recognized, such care for nature often develops because humans fear the effects of environmental disasters on our lives, and not because we genuinely care about the lives and wellbeing of Other creatures or the earth, in and of themselves. And even within environmental concerns, the recognition of the interrelatedness of all living subjects often leads to a hierarchy of environmental issues. Within conceptions of human/ more-than-human relations, there is often a hierarchy of environmental issues and social issues, including the (neo)colonial treatment of humans outside the dominant, white, European/western man as nonhuman, strengthening the conceptual disconnect between these human and more-than-human. These aspects of environmental interrelatedness must be regarded as not only anthropocentric, but violent, contemporary manifestations of the historically-dominant, European construction of the normative and viable human subject. In this sense, it is evident that a new consciousness must emerge. Humans must begin to recognize that, as Paula Gunn Allen states, “we are the land… the land and the people are the same… The earth is the source of being of the people and we are equally the being of the earth. The land is not really a place separate from ourselves… The land is not a mere source of survival, distant from the creatures it nurtures” (Allen, as quoted in Christ, 1997: 114). Christ employs the term ‘interdependence’ in order to characterize the connection between all beings in the web of life. Yet the word interdependence must be used cautiously, for although humans are dependent on nature, animals, plants and other more-than-humans, as well as other humans for our survival, the earth is not reciprocally dependent on humans. In fact, the presence of (certain) humans on the earth has historically prevented, and continues to threaten, the flourishing and wellbeing of Others, including both human and more-than-human beings within the web of life. In this sense, concepts such as interdependence undermine the reality of power relations that exist between and among different modes of being, including human relationships and those between humans and nature. For this reason, ecofeminists’ use the notion interdependence to illustrate that humans are not separate from, but intimately implicated within, the natural world. This concept helps to demonstrate that “‘human’ beings are essentially relational and interdependent. We are tied to [‘human’ and ‘more-than-human’] Others from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Our lives are dependent in more ways than we can begin to imagine on support and nurture from the web of life, from the earth body” (Christ, 1997: 136). Because the interdependent relation between human subjects and the earth is conceptualized as so intimate, human actions can have significant, and often disastrous effects on nature. However, the agency and power of nature in creating significant phenomena in the lived realities, societies and experiences of humans must also be recognized. This concept destabilizes colonial, western (and gendered) conceptions of the earth as a passive object, to be owned, harnessed, excavated and harvested in order to increase the economic and social flourishing of humans. In other words, the notion of interdependence demonstrates that humans are also affected by more-than-human lives, and that the earth is not a passive, receptive instrument to be exploited by and for human cultures. Examples such as decreased air quality and Colony Collapse Disorder illustrate the power of the earth to violently fight back against human abuse in order to protect itself. In order for a more life-affirming, harmonious relationship between the natural world and human beings to emerge and, therefore, in order to ensure the survival of all beings within the web of life, what ultimately needs to emerge is a new conception of the relationship between human and more-than-human life. McFague proposes the notion of subject-subjects relations, which encompasses a radical and life-affirming way of transforming this hierarchical relationship. According to this model, human subjects must relate to nature as a subject. While recognizing their own intrinsic relation to Other subjects, grounded in their interconnection within the web of life, human subjects must recognize morethan- human subjects’ own intrinsic value and right to live, quite apart from human interests and lives. In other words, we must recognize the otherness of morethan- humans, yet simultaneously feel a connection and recognize an affinity with such subjects. This connection “underscores both radical unity and radical individuality. It suggests a different, basic sensibility for all our knowing and doing and a different kind of know-ink and doing… It says: ‘I am a subject and live in a world of many other different subjects’” (McFague, 1997: 38). According to McFague, this will involve “the loving eye [as well as] the other senses, for it moves the eye from the mind (and the heavens) to the body (and the earth). It will result in an embodied kind of knowledge of other subjects who, like ourselves, occupy specific bodies in specific locations on this messy, muddy, wonderful, complex, mysterious earth” (Mc Fague, 1997: 36). Practicing this type of relationship will implicitly and explicitly embody a radical challenge to what it has historically meant to be both a human and nonhuman subject. It will require an erosion of the imagined boundary, grounded in the perception of difference, between human and nature, and the other, interconnected dichotomies within the European, colonial, historical imagination. It will also involve re-valuing the both sides of classic western dualisms as significant and worthy in and of themselves. This type of relationship will necessitate the erosion of concepts such as intrinsic inferiority and superiority, and potentially end the embodied and lived power relations that such concepts sanction. Perhaps most importantly, the subject-subjects relationship will allow a new understanding of the relations between all beings within the web of life to emerge; the human, that is, the normative, white, European man of the (neo)colonial imagination, and the human of the human/nature dichotomy, and his wellbeing, subjectivity, knowledge and mode of being, will be displaced of from the dominant center. Beginning to recognize and relate to more-thanhumans as subjects will inevitably represent a strong challenge to the coherence of the traditional, anthropocentric, colonial paradigm. The fantasy of humans as the sole, normative subjects within the universe has historically, and continues to provide powerful senses of security and identity to many of us; we are therefore deeply attached to this conception of humanness. However, in order for a more life affirming, harmonious relationship between the natural world and human beings to emerge, we must begin to practice such models within all of our relationships, including relationships with more-than-human beings and other human subjects. Such an endeavor is crucial for the flourishing, and ultimately, the survival of all beings within the web of life. Bibliography Christ, Carol P (1997). Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality. California, Massachusetts and New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing. Gebara, Ivone (1999). Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Hewitt Suchocki, Marjorie (1982). “Why a Relational Theology?” In God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 3-11. McFague, Sallie (1997). Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Primavesi, Anne (1991). From Apocalypse to Genesis: Ecology, Feminism and Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. i The term, ‘more-than-human’ will be used in place of the term, ‘nonhuman’ in certain areas within this paper. For a number of reasons, I believe the former term is more appropriate. Firstly, nonhuman carries connotations of difference from an explicitly human norm, and a related sense of deficiency and deviance. For this reason, I will employ nonhuman in areas in which I describe traditional, colonial human perceptions of more-than-humans. However, I believe that more-than-human conveys a sense that there literally exists significantly more than simply human realities in the world. More-than-human is also more comprehensive than related terms, such as animals or nature, as it can encompass many diverse expressions of realities, experiences and subject(ivitie)s that transcend traditional constructions of humanness.

Since the neoclassical school, the separation between facts and values, is and ought, positive and normative, has become a concern in conventional economic analyses. Economics should focus on facts, and present general principles, leaving the choice of various technical alternatives to policy makers. This article addresses the following questions: can economics, seen as a positive science, be separated from the political dimension? Is it possible to separate facts from values or are they necessarily intertwined?After showing how the separation between economics and moral philosophy unfolded throughout the history of economic thought, the article analyses the factvalue dichotomy discussion and concludes that facts and values are necessarily intertwined. Then, the article shows that the premises and theories of conventional economic theories contain hidden values, despite being presented as universal truths on which policies are based, and thus fail to discuss the various perspectives of the problems.Reviving a tradition commenced by Aristotle, the article concludes by arguing that economics is necessarily moral and political. However, the acknowledgement of the normative nature of economics cannot compromise the pursuit of objectivity.

Rooted in the fact–value dichotomy of the modern scientific outlook, psychology tends to render “ought” as distinguishable from and additional to “is.” The purpose of this article, however, is to disclose an “oughtness” at the center of human existence by which human beings inevitably live and suffer. In the first part, psychology’s neglect of oughtness is tracked down through significant albeit different theoretical strands. Second, through a threefold argument entailing (a) the other, (b) language, and (c) the self, it is revealed how people’s concrete lived lives as well as the very formation of a subject are incomprehensible without the oughtness of existence. Finally, the relation between suffering and oughtness is spelled out. Due to the oughtness of existence, guilt and inadequacy enter into the human life.

In light of potentially aggressive disease courses of either IBD type—CD or UC—marked by frequent flareups or non-subsiding inflammatory activity, effective immunosuppression is key to preventing progressive tissue destruction and permanent disability. However, over-treating patients with a high probability of an indolent disease course ought to be avoided. To solve this therapeutic dichotomy, there is a pressing need for a reliable classification of patients based on their biosignature to rate their individual prognosis and likelihood of response to a given therapy. This need for pinpoint therapeutic strategies is addressed by the concepts of PreM and the more stringently defined PerM. In this review we summarize the most pivotal study results published so far in the field of individualized IBD care with a special focus on molecular diagnostics and their applicability in the clinical setting.

Universal philosophy of religion is occupied with religion as a human manifestation, its essence and its function in human life. Special philosophy of religion is entrusted with giving a rational elucidation of the teachings of a particular religion, e.g. christianity. the medieval philosophers operated in this way and so do modern philosophers of religion as Kierkegaard and Løgstrup. In principle there is no difference between philosophy of religion and philisophy of science. The tasks of christian philosophy of religion are of the same kind as the tasks of philosophy of science and humanities get from phychoanalytic interpretation of literature, semiotics or hermeneutical bioloy.Philosophy has difficulties in answering the problems which traditionally have been answered by religion. Philosophy is a confession to reason, but the totally rational world is a caricature. Philosophy and reason are not the highest forms of life, but ought to take up a serving function. therefore the paper concludes in a dichotomy between academic considerations and some unacademic aphorisms.

PurposeFor nearly three decades, numerous scholars have searched for a robust relationship between firm performance and organizational ambidexterity—so far with questionable results. The aim of this short essay is thus to critically examine the performance of applied performance measurements.Design/methodology/approachAfter discussing methodological issues and revealing a conceptually neglected “level” distinction in organizational ambidexterity studies, we contribute to conceptual clarity as to whether exploration and exploitation ought to be conceived as continuous or orthogonal.FindingsFirst, even if the dichotomy of exploration and exploitation is orthogonally conceptualized, at least one trade-off, either on the level of the explanans or the level of the explanandum, can be bypassed but cannot conceptually be denied. Second, we conclude that explaining overall firm performance with the relation of just two variables (exploration and exploitation)—referring to the inherently conflicting title of this paper, “Reduced to the Max”—is a hazardous endeavor.Research limitations/implicationsBased on these insights, future research may benefit from studying organizational ambidexterity and firm performance more qualitatively and paying more attention to the declared level distinction.Originality/valueThe paper reveals a crucial neglect of level and provides an answer to one of the core questions of organizational ambidexterity research: that of continuity vs orthogonality.

AbstractThis article deals with the construction and performance of antisemitism in Nazi children’s books. It provides an explorative discourse analysis of Trust No Fox as reported (Bauer, Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid! Ein Bilderbuch für Gross und Klein, Stürmer-Verlag, Nuremberg, 1936) and The Poisonous Mushroom as reported (Hiemer, Der Giftpilz—ein Stürmerbuch für Jung u. Alt, Stürmer-Verlag, Nuremberg, 1938) through the lens of Critical applied legal linguistics (CrALL). It seeks to elucidate how ‘Jewishness’ is constructed in the two books, with a view to enhancing our understanding of the intertextual and interdiscursive embeddedness of anti-Semitic rhetoric generally and nomination and predication strategies specifically. To this end, a specialised corpus of 10,002 tokens, 2,345 types and 43 illustrations was compiled. Subsequently XML annotation was applied with the data being parsed into headings, sentences and/or lines. It was found that the books follow a Jewish/non-Jewish dichotomy, consistently referring to breaches of custom, morality, religion and law. Both works purport to provide descriptive accounts of ‘Jews as they are,’ when, in fact, they generate the normative illusion of ‘Jews as they ought to be’ according to Nazi ideology. It is suggested to use the insights gained into the anti-Semitic rhetoric of children’s books to detect, describe and critique patterns of anti-Semitic rhetoric today.

Introduction How do we measure intimacy? What are its impacts on our social, political and personal lives? Can we claim a politics to our intimate lives that escapes the normative confines of archaic institutions, while making social justice claims for relationship recognition? Negotiating some of these disparate questions requires us to think more broadly in contemporary public debates on equality and relationship recognition. Specifically, by outlining the impacts of the popular "gay marriage" debate, this paper examines the impacts of queer theory in association with public policy and community lobbying for relationship equality. Much of the debate remains polarised: eliminating discrimination is counterposed to religious or reproductive narratives that suggest such recognition undermines the value of the "natural" heterosexual family. Introducing queer theory into advocacy that oscillates between rights and reproduction problematises indexing intimacy against normative ideas of monogamy and family. While the arguments circulated by academics, lawyers, politicians and activists have disparate political and ethical impacts, when taken together, they continue to define marriage as a public regulation of intimacy and citizenship. Citizenship, measured in democratic participation and choice, however, can only be realised through reflexive politics that value difference. Encouraging critical dialogue across disparate areas of the marriage equality debate will have a significant impact on how we make ethical claims for recognising intimacy. (Re)defining Marriage In legislative terms, marriage remains the most fundamental means through which the relationship between citizenship and intimacy is crystallised in Australia. For example, in 2004 the Federal Liberal Government in Australia passed a legislative amendment to the Marriage Act 1961 and expressly defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. By issuing a public legislative amendment, the Government intended to privilege monogamous (in this case understood as heterosexual) intimacy by precluding same-sex or polygamous marriage. Such an exercise had rhetorical rather than legal significance, as common law principles had previously defined the scope of marriage in gender specific terms for decades (Graycar and Millbank 41). Marriage as an institution, however, is not a universal or a-historical discourse limited to legal or political constructs. Socialist feminist critiques of marriage in the 1950s conceptualised the legal and gender specific constructs in marriage as a patriarchal contract designed to regulate female bodies (Hannam 146). However, Angela McRobbie notes that within a post-feminist context, these historical realities of gendered subjugation, reproduction or domesticity have been "disarticulated" (26). Marriage has become a more democratic and self-reflexive expression of intimacy for women. David Shumway elaborates this idea and argues that this shift has emerged in a context of "social solidarity" within a consumer environment of social fragmentation (23). What this implies is that marriage now evokes a range of cultural choices, consumer practices and affective trends that are incommensurable to a singular legal or historical term of reference. Debating the Politics of Intimacy and Citizenship In order to reflect on this shifting relationship between choice, citizenship and marriage as a concept, it is necessary to highlight that marriage extends beyond private articulations of love. It is a ritualised performance of heterosexual individual (or coupled) citizenship as it entrenches economic and civil rights and responsibilities. The private becomes public. Current neo-liberal approaches to same-sex marriage focus on these symbolic and economic questions of how recognising intimacy is tied to equality. In a legal and political context, marriage is defined in s5 Marriage Act as "the union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life." While the Act does not imbue marriage with religious or procreative significance, such a gender dichotomous definition prevents same-sex and gender diverse partners from entering into marriage. For Morris Kaplan, this is a problem because "full equality for lesbian and gay citizens requires access to the legal and social recognition of our intimate associations" (201). Advocates and activists define the quest for equal citizenship by engaging with current religious dogma that situates marriage within a field of reproduction, whereby same-sex marriage is seen to rupture the traditional rubric of monogamous kinship and the biological processes of "gender complementarity" (Australian Christian Lobby 1). Liberal equality arguments reject such conservative assertions on the basis that desire, sexuality and intimacy are innate features of human existence and hence always already implicated in public spheres (Kaplan 202). Thus, legal visibility or state recognition becomes crucial to sustaining practices of intimacy. Problematising the broader social impact of a civil rights approach through the perspective of queer theory, the private/public distinctions that delineate citizenship and intimacy become more difficult to negotiate. Equality and queer theory arguments on same-sex marriage are difficult to reconcile, primarily because they signify the different psychic and cultural investments in the monogamous couple. Butler asserts that idealisations of the couple in legal discourse relates to norms surrounding community, family and nationhood (Undoing 116). This structured circulation of sexual norms reifies the hetero-normative forms of relationships that ought to be recognised (and are desired) by the state. Butler also interrogates this logic of marriage, as a heterosexual norm, and suggests it has the capacity to confine rather than liberate subjects (Undoing 118-20). The author's argument relies upon Michel Foucault's notion of power and subjection, where the subject is not an autonomous individual (as conceived in neo liberal discourses) but a site of disciplined discursive production (Trouble 63). Butler positions the heterosexuality of marriage as a "cultural and symbolic foundation" that renders forms of kinship, monogamy, parenting and community intelligible (Undoing 118). In this sense, marriage can be a problematic articulation of state interests, particularly in terms of perpetuating domesticity, economic mobility and the heterosexual family. As former Australian Prime Minister John Howard opines: Marriage is … one of the bedrock institutions of our society … marriage, as we understand it in our society, is about children … providing for the survival of the species. (qtd. in Wade) Howard's politicisation of marriage suggests that it remains crucial to the preservation of the nuclear family. In doing so, the statement also exemplifies homophobic anxieties towards non-normative kinship relations "outside the family". The Prime Ministers' words characterise marriage as a framework which privileges hegemonic ideas of monogamy, biological reproduction and gender dichotomy. Butler responds to these homophobic terms by alluding to the discursive function of a "heterosexual matrix" which codes and produces dichotomous sexes, genders and (hetero)sexual desires (Trouble 36). By refusing to accept the binary neo-liberal discourse in which one is either for or against gay marriage, Butler asserts that by prioritising marriage, the individual accepts the discursive terms of recognition and legitimacy in subjectifying what counts as love (Undoing 115). What this author's argument implies is that by recuperating marital norms, the individual is not liberated, but rather participates in the discursive "trap" and succumbs to the terms of a heterosexual matrix (Trouble 56). In contradistinction to Howard's political rhetoric, engaging with Foucault's broader theoretical work on sexuality and friendship can influence how we frame the possibilities of intimacy beyond parochial narratives of conjugal relationships. Foucault emphasises that countercultural intimacies rely on desires that are relegated to the margins of mainstream (hetero)sexual culture. For example, the transformational aesthetics in practices such as sadomasochism or queer polyamorous relationships exist due to certain prohibitions in respect to sex (Foucault, History (1) 38, and "Sex" 169). Foucault notes how forms of resistance that transgress mainstream norms produce new experiences of pleasure. Being "queer" (though Foucault does not use this word) becomes identified with new modes of living, rather than a static identity (Essential 138). Extending Foucault, Butler argues that positioning queer intimacies within a field of state recognition risks normalising relationships in terms of heterosexual norms whilst foreclosing the possibilities of new modes of affection. Jasbir Puar argues that queer subjects continue to feature on the peripheries of moral and legal citizenship when their practices of intimacy fail to conform to the socio-political dyadic ideal of matrimony, fidelity and reproduction (22-28). Puar and Butler's reluctance to embrace marriage becomes clearer through an examination of the obiter dicta in the recent American jurisprudence where the proscription on same-sex marriage was overturned in California: To the extent proponents seek to encourage a norm that sexual activity occur within marriage to ensure that reproduction occur within stable households, Proposition 8 discourages that norm because it requires some sexual activity and child-bearing and child-rearing to occur outside marriage. (Perry vs Schwarzenegger 128) By connecting the discourse of matrimony and sex with citizenship, the court reifies the value of marriage as an institution of the family, which should be extended to same-sex couples. Therefore, by locating the family in reproductive heterosexual terms, the court forecloses other modes of recognition or rights for those who are in non-monogamous relationships or choose not to reproduce. The legal reasoning in the case evinces the ways in which intimate citizenship or legitimate kinship is understood in highly parochial terms. As Kane Race elaborates, the suturing of domesticity and nationhood, with the rhetoric that "reproduction occur within stable households", frames heterosexual nuclear bonds as the means to legitimate sexual relations (98). By privileging a familial kinship aesthetic to marriage, the state implicitly disregards recognising the value of intimacy in non-nuclear communities or families (Race 100). Australia, however, unlike most foreign nations, has a dual model of relationship recognition. De facto relationships are virtually indistinguishable from marriage in terms of the rights and entitlements couples are able to access. Very recently, the amendments made by the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth) has ensured same-sex couples have been included under Federal definitions of de facto relationships, thereby granting same-sex couples the same material rights and entitlements as heterosexual married couples. While comprehensive de facto recognition operates uniquely in Australia, it is still necessary to question the impact of jurisprudence that considers only marriage provides the legitimate structure for raising children. As Laurent Berlant suggests, those who seek alternative "love plots" are denied the legal and cultural spaces to realise them ("Love" 479). Berlant's critique emphasises how current "progressive" legal approaches to same-sex relationships rely on a monogamous (heterosexual) trajectory of the "love plot" which marginalises those who are in divorced, single, polyamorous or multi-parent situations. For example, in the National Year of Action, a series of marriage equality rallies held across Australia over 2010, non-conjugal forms of intimacy were inadvertently sidelined in order to make a claim for relationship recognition. In a letter to the Sydney Star Observer, a reader laments: As a gay man, I cannot understand why gay people would want to engage in a heterosexual ritual called marriage … Why do gay couples want to buy into this ridiculous notion is beyond belief. The laws need to be changed so that gays are treated equal under the law, but this is not to be confused with marriage as these are two separate issues... (Michael 2) Marriage marks a privileged position of citizenship and consumption, to which all other gay and lesbian rights claims are tangential. Moreover, as this letter to the Sydney Star Observer implies, by claiming sexual citizenship through the rubric of marriage, discussions about other campaigns for legislative equality are effectively foreclosed. Melissa Gregg expands on such a problematic, noting that the legal responses to equality reiterate a normative relationship between sexuality and power, where only couples that subscribe to dyadic, marriage-like relationships are offered entitlements by the state (4). Correspondingly, much of the public activism around marriage equality in Australia seeks to achieve its impact for equality (reforming the Marriage Act) by positioning intimacy in terms of state legitimacy. Butler and Warner argue that when speaking of legitimacy a relation to what is legitimate is implied. Lisa Bower corroborates this, asserting "legal discourse creates norms which universalise particular modes of living…while suppressing other practices and identities" (267). What Butler's and Bower's arguments reveal is that legitimacy is obtained through the extension of marriage to homosexual couples. For example, Andrew Barr, the current Labor Party Education Minister in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), noted that "saying no to civil unions is to say that some relationships are more legitimate than others" (quoted in "Legal Ceremonies"). Ironically, such a statement privileges civil unions by rendering them as the normative basis on which to grant legal recognition. Elizabeth Povinelli argues the performance of dyadic intimacy becomes the means to assert legal and social sovereignty (112). Therefore, as Jenni Millbank warns, marriage, or even distinctive forms of civil unions, if taken alone, can entrench inequalities for those who choose not to participate in these forms of recognition (8). Grassroots mobilisation and political lobbying strategies around marriage equality activism can have the unintentional impact, however, of obscuring peripheral forms of intimacy and subsequently repudiating those who contest the movement towards marriage. Warner argues that those who choose to marry derive pride from their monogamous commitment and "family" oriented practice, a privilege afforded through marital citizenship (82). Conversely, individuals and couples who deviate from the "normal" (read: socially palatable) intimate citizen, such as promiscuous or polyamorous subjects, are rendered shameful or pitiful. This political discourse illustrates that there is a strong impetus in the marriage equality movement to legitimate "homosexual love" because it mimics the norms of monogamy, stability, continuity and family by only seeking to substitute the sex of the "other" partner. Thus, civil rights discourse maintains the privileged political economy of marriage as it involves reproduction (even if it is not biological), mainstream social roles and monogamous sex. By defining social membership and future life in terms of a heterosexual life-narrative, same-sex couples become wedded to the idea of matrimony as the basis for sustainable intimacy and citizenship (Berlant and Warner 557). Warner is critical of recuperating discourses that privilege marriage as the ideal form of intimacy. This is particularly concerning when diverse erotic and intimate communities, which are irreducible to normative forms of citizenship, are subject to erasure. Que(e)rying the Future of Ethics and Politics By connecting liberal equality arguments with Butler and Warner's work on queer ethics, there is hesitation towards privileging marriage as the ultimate form of intimacy. Moreover, Butler stresses the importance of a transformative practice of queer intimacy: It is crucial…that we maintain a critical and transformative relation to the norms that govern what will not count as intelligible and recognisable alliance and kinship. (Undoing 117) Here the author attempts to negotiate the complex terrain of queer citizenship and ethics. On one hand, it is necessary to be made visible in order to engage in political activism and be afforded rights within a state discourse. Simultaneously, on the other hand, there is a need to transform the prevailing hetero-normative rhetoric of romantic love in order to prevent pathologising bodies or rendering certain forms of intimacy as aberrant or deviant because, as Warner notes, they do not conform to our perception of what we understand to be normal or morally desirable. Foucault's work on the aesthetics of the self offers a possible transformational practice which avoids the risks Warner and Butler mention because it eludes the "normative determinations" of moralities and publics, whilst engaging in an "ethical stylization" (qtd. in Race 144). Whilst Foucault's work does not explicitly address the question of marriage, his work on friendship gestures to the significance of affective bonds. Queer kinship has the potential to produce new ethics, where bodies do not become subjects of desires, but rather act as agents of pleasure. Negotiating the intersection between active citizenship and transformative intimacy requires rethinking the politics of recognition and normalisation. Warner is quite ambivalent as to the potential of appropriating marriage for gays and lesbians, despite the historical dynamism of marriage. Rather than acting as a progressive mechanism for rights, it is an institution that operates by refusing to recognise other relations (Warner 129). However, as Alexander Duttmann notes, recognition is more complex and a paradoxical means of relation and identification. It involves a process in which the majority neutralises the difference of the (minority) Other in order to assimilate it (27). However, in the process of recognition, the Other which is validated, then transforms the position of the majority, by altering the terms by which recognition is granted. Marriage no longer simply confers recognition for heterosexual couples to engage in reproduction (Secomb 133). While some queer couples may subscribe to a monogamous relationship structure, these relationships necessarily trouble conservative politics. The lamentations of the Australian Christian Lobby regarding the "fundamental (anatomical) gender complementarity" of same-sex marriage reflect this by recognising the broader social transformation that will occur (and already does with many heterosexual marriages) by displacing the association between marriage, procreation and parenting (5). Correspondingly, Foucault's work assists in broadening the debate on relationship recognition by transforming our understanding of choice and ethics in terms of "queer friendship." He describes it as a practice that resists the normative public distinction between romantic and platonic affection and produces new aesthetics for sexual and non-sexual intimacy (Foucault, Essential 170). Linnell Secomb argues that this "double potential" alluded to in Foucault and Duttman's work, has the capacity to neutralise difference as Warner fears (133). However, it can also transform dominant narratives of sexual citizenship, as enabling marriage equality will impact on how we imagine traditional heterosexual or patriarchal "plots" to intimacy (Berlant, "Intimacy" 286). Conclusion Making an informed impact into public debates on marriage equality requires charting the locus of sexuality, intimacy and citizenship. Negotiating academic discourses, social and community activism, with broader institutions and norms presents political and social challenges when thinking about the sorts of intimacy that should be recognised by the state. The civil right to marriage, irrespective of the sex or gender of one's partner, reflects a crucial shift towards important democratic participation of non-heterosexual citizens. However, it is important to note that the value of such intimacy cannot be indexed against a single measure of legal reform. While Butler and Warner present considered indictments on the normalisation of queer intimacy through marriage, such arguments do not account for the impacts of que(e)rying cultural norms and practices through social and political change. Marriage is not a singular or a-historical construction reducible to state recognition. Moreover, in a secular democracy, marriage should be one of many forms of diverse relationship recognition open to same-sex and gender diverse couples. In order to expand the impact of social and legal claims for recognition, it is productive to rethink the complex nature of recognition, ritual and aesthetics within marriage. In doing so, we can begin to transform the possibilities for articulating intimate citizenship in plural democracies. References Australian Christian Lobby. "Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009." Deakin: ACL, 2009. Australian Government. "Sec. 5." Marriage Act of 1961 (Cth). 1961. ———. Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth). 2008. Bell, David, and John Binnie. The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. Oxford: Polity P, 2000. Berlant, Lauren. "Intimacy: A Special Issue." Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-88. ———. "Love, a Queer Feeling." Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis. Eds. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001:432-52. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. "Sex in Public." Ed. Lauren Berlant. Intimacy. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2000: 311-30. Bower, Lisa. "Queer Problems/Straight Solutions: The Limits of a Politics of 'Official Recognition'" Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 267-91. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Duttmann, Alexander. Between Cultures: Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition. London: Verso, 2000. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (1): The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1977. ———. "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity." Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. London: Allen Lange/Penguin, 1984. 163-74. ———. Essential Works of Foucault: 1954-1984: Ethics, Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 2000. Graycar, Reg, and Jenni Millbank. "From Functional Families to Spinster Sisters: Australia's Distinctive Path to Relationship Recognition." Journal of Law and Policy 24. 2007: 1-44. Gregg, Melissa. "Normal Homes." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 27 Aug. 2007 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/02-gregg.php›. Hannam, Jane. Feminism. London and New York: Pearson Education, 2007. Kaplan, Morris. "Intimacy and Equality: The Question of Lesbian and Gay Marriage." Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 201-30. "Legal Ceremonies for Same-Sex Couples." ABC Online 11 Nov. 2009. 13 Dec. 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739661.htm›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London and New York: Sage, 2008. Michael. "Why Marriage?" Letter to the Editor. Sydney Star Observer 1031 (20 July 2010): 2. Millbank, Jenni. "Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law - Part One: Couples." Federal Law Review 34 (2008): 1-44. Perry v. Schwarzenegger. 3: 09 CV 02292. United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 2010. Povinelli, Elizabeth. Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Race, Kane. Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009. Secomb, Linnell. Philosophy and Love. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. Shumway, David. Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy and the Marriage Crisis. New York: New York UP, 2003. Wade, Matt. "PM Joins Opposition against Gay Marriage as Cleric's Election Stalls." The Sydney Morning Herald 6 Aug. 2003. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

Historical fiction, a widely-read genre, continues to engender contradiction and controversy within the fields of literature and historiography. This paper begins with a discussion of the differences and similarities between historical writing and the historical novel, focusing on the way these forms interpret and represent the past. It then examines the dilemma facing historians as they try to come to terms with the modern era and the growing competition from other modes of presenting history. Finally, it considers claims by Australian historians that so-called “fictive history” has been bestowed with historical authority to the detriment of traditional historiography. The Fact/Fiction Dichotomy Hayden White, a leading critic in the field of historiography, claims that the surge in popularity of historical fiction and the novel form in the nineteenth century caused historians to seek recognition of their field as a serious “science” (149). Historians believed that, to be scientific, historical studies had to cut ties with any form of artistic writing or imaginative literature, especially the romantic novel. German historian Leopold von Ranke “anathematized” the historical novel virtually from its first appearance in Scott’s Waverley in 1814. Hayden White argues that Ranke and others after him wrote history as narrative while eschewing the use of imagination and invention that were “exiled into the domain of ‘fiction’ ” (149-150). Early critics in the nineteenth century questioned the value of historical fiction. Famous Cuban poet Jose Maria Heredia believed that history was opposite and superior to fiction; he accused the historical novel of degrading history to the level of fiction which, he argued, is lies (cited in de Piérola 152). Alessandro Manzoni, though partially agreeing with Heredia, argued that fiction had value in its “poetic truth” as opposed to the “positive truth” of history (153). He eventually decided that the historical novel fails through the mixing of the incompatible elements of history and fiction, which can lead to deception (ibid). More than a hundred years after Heredia, Georg Lukács, in his much-cited The Historical Novel, first published in 1937, was more concerned with the social aspect of the historical novel and its capacity to portray the lives of its protagonists. This form of writing, through its attention to the detail of minor events, was better at highlighting the social aspects than the greater moments of history. Lukács argues that the historical novel should focus on the “poetic awakening” of those who participated in great historical events rather than the events themselves (42). The reader should be able to experience first-hand “the social and human motives which led men to think, feel and act just as they did in historical reality” (ibid). Through historical fiction, the reader is thus able to gain a greater understanding of a specific period and why people acted as they did. In contrast to these early critics, historian and author of three books on history and three novels, Richard Slotkin, argues that the historical novel can recount the past as accurately as history, because it should involve similar research methods and critical interpretation of the data (225). Kent den Heyer and Alexandra Fidyk go even further, suggesting that “historical fiction may offer a more plausible representation of the past than those sources typically accepted as more factual” (144). In its search for “poetic truth,” the novel tries to create a sense of what the past was, without necessarily adhering to all the factual details and by eliminating facts not essential to the story (Slotkin 225). For Hayden White, the difference between factual and fictional discourse, is that one is occupied by what is “true” and the other by what is “real” (147). Historical documents may provide a basis for a “true account of the world” in a certain time and place, but they are limited in their capacity to act as a foundation for the exploration of all aspects of “reality.” In White’s words: The rest of the real, after we have said what we can assert to be true about it, would not be everything and anything we could imagine about it. The real would consist of everything that can be truthfully said about its actuality plus everything that can be truthfully said about what it could possibly be. (ibid) White’s main point is that both history and fiction are interpretative by nature. Historians, for their part, interpret given evidence from a subjective viewpoint; this means that it cannot be unbiased. In the words of Beverley Southgate, “factual history is revealed as subjectively chosen, subjectively interpreted, subjectively constructed and incorporated within a narrative” (45). Both fiction and history are narratives, and “anyone who writes a narrative is fictionalising,” according to Keith Jenkins (cited in Southgate 32). The novelist and historian find meaning through their own interpretation of the known record (Brown) to produce stories that are entertaining and structured. Moreover, historians often reach conflicting conclusions in their translations of the same archival documents, which, in the extreme, can spark a wider dispute such as the so-called history wars, the debate about the representation of the Indigenous peoples in Australian history that has polarised both historians and politicians. The historian’s purpose differs from that of the novelist. Historians examine the historical record in fine detail in an attempt to understand its complexities, and then use digressions and footnotes to explain and lend authority to their findings. The novelist on the other hand, uses their imagination to create personalities and plot and can leave out important details; the novelist achieves authenticity through detailed description of setting, customs, culture, buildings and so on (Brown). Nevertheless, the main task of both history and historical fiction is to represent the past to a reader in the present; this “shared concern with the construction of meaning through narrative” is a major component in the long-lasting, close relationship between fiction and history (Southgate 19). However, unlike history, the historical novel mixes fiction and fact, and is therefore “a hybrid of two genres” (de Piérola 152); this mixture of supposed opposites of fact and fiction creates a dilemma for the theorist, because historical fiction cannot necessarily be read as belonging to either category. Attitudes towards the line drawn between fiction and history are changing as more and more critics and theorists explore the area where the two genres intersect. Historian John Demos argues that with the passing of time, this distinction “seems less a boundary than a borderland of surprising width and variegated topography” (329). While some historians are now willing to investigate the wide area where the two genres overlap, this approach remains a concern for traditionalists. History’s Dilemma Historians face a crisis as they try to come to terms with the postmodern era which has seen unprecedented questioning of the validity of history’s claim to accuracy in recounting the past. In the words of Jenkins et al., “ ‘history’ per se wobbles” as it experiences a period of uncertainty and challenge; the field is “much changed and deeply contested,” as historians seek to understand the meaning of history itself (6). But is postmodernism the cause of the problem? Writing in 1986 Linda Hutcheon, well known for her work on postmodernism, attempted to clarify the term as it is applied in modern times in reference to fiction, where, she states, it is usually taken to mean “metafiction, or texts which are in some dominant and constitutive way self-referential and auto-representational” (301). To eliminate any confusion with regard to concept or terminology, Hutcheon coined the phrase “historiographic metafiction," which includes “the presence of the past” in “historical, social, and ideological” form (302). As examples, she cites contemporary novels The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The White Hotel, Midnight’s Children and Famous Last Words. Hutcheon explains that all these works “self-consciously focus on the processes of producing and receiving paradoxically fictive historical writing” (ibid). In the Australian context, Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang and Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish could be added to the list. Like the others, they question how historical sources maintain their status as authentic historical documents in the context of a fictional work (302). However, White argues that the crisis in historical studies is not due to postmodernism but has materialised because historians have failed to live up to their nineteenth century expectations of history being recognised as a science (149). Postmodernists are not against history, White avows; what they do not accept “is a professional historiography” that serves self-seeking governing bodies with its outdated and severely limited approach to objectivity (152). This kind of historiography has denied itself access to aesthetic writing and the imaginary, while it has also cut any links it had “to what was most creative in the real sciences it sought half-heartedly to emulate” (ibid). Furthering White’s argument, historian Robert Rosenstone states that past certitude in the claims of historians to be the sole guardians of historical truth now seem outdated in the light of our accumulated knowledge. The once impregnable position of the historian is no longer tenable because: We know too much about framing images and stories, too much about narrative, too much about the problematics of causality, too much about the subjectivity of perception, too much about our own cultural imperatives and biases, too much about the disjuncture between language and the world it purports to describe to believe we can actually capture the world of the past on the page. (Rosenstone 12) While the archive confers credibility on history, it does not confer the right to historians to claim it as the truth (Southgate 6); there are many possible versions of the past, which can be presented to us in any number of ways as history (Jenkins et al. 1). And this is a major challenge for historians as other modes of representing the past cater to public demand in place of traditional approaches. Public interest in history has grown over the last 20 years (Harlan 109). Historical novels fill the shelves of bookstores and libraries, while films, television series and documentaries about the past attract large audiences. In the words of Rosenstone, “people are hungry for the past, as various studies tell us and the responses to certain films, TV series and museums indicate” (17). Rosenstone laments the fact that historians, despite this attraction to the past, have failed to stir public interest in their own writings. While works of history have their strengths, they target a specific, extremely limited audience in an outdated format (17). They have forgotten the fact that, in the words of White, “the conjuring up of the past requires art as well as information” (149). This may be true of some historians, but there are many writers of non-fiction, including historians, who use the narrative voice and other fictional techniques in their writings (Ricketson). Matthew Ricketson accuses White of confusing “fiction with literariness,” while other scholars take fiction and narrative to be the same thing. He argues that “the use of a wide range of modes of writing usually associated with fiction are not the sole province of fiction” and that narrative theorists have concentrated their attention on fictional narrative, thereby excluding factual forms of writing (ibid). One of the defining elements of creative non-fiction is its use of literary techniques in writing about factual events and people. At the same time, this does not make it fiction, which by definition, relies on invention (ibid). However, those historians who do write outside the limits of traditional history can attract criticism. Historian Richard Current argues that if writers of history and biography try to be more effective through literary considerations, they sometimes lose their objectivity and authenticity. While it is acceptable to seek to write with clarity and force, it is out of the question to present “occasional scenes in lifelike detail” in the manner of a novelist. Current contends that if only one source is used, this violates “the historiographical requirement of two or more independent and competent witnesses.” This requirement is important because it explains why much of the writing by academic historians is perceived as “dry-as-dust” (Current 87). Modern-day historians are contesting this viewpoint as they analyse the nature and role of their writings, with some turning to historical fiction as an alternative mode of expression. Perhaps one of the more well-known cases in recent times was that of historian Simon Schama, who, in writing Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations), was criticised for creating dramatic scenes based on dubious historical sources without informing the reader of his fabrications (Nelson). In this work, Schama questions notions of factual history and the limitations of historians. The title is suggestive in itself, while the afterword to the book is explicit, as “historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation . . . We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot” (320). Another example is Rosenstone’s Mirror in the Shrine, which was considered to be “postmodern” and not acceptable to publishers and agents as the correct way to present history, despite the author’s reassurance that nothing was invented, “it just tells the story a different way” ("Space for the Birds to Fly" 16). Schama is not the only author to draw fire from critics for neglecting to inform the reader of the veracity or not of their writing. Richard Current accused Gore Vidal of getting his facts wrong and of inaccurately portraying Lincoln in his work, Lincoln: A Novel (81). Despite the title, which is a form of disclaimer itself, Current argued that Vidal could have avoided criticism if he had not asserted that his work was authentic history, or had used a disclaimer in a preface to deny any connection between the novel’s characters and known persons (82). Current is concerned about this form of writing, known as “fictional history," which, unlike historical fiction, “pretends to deal with real persons and events but actually reshapes them—and thus rewrites the past” (77). This concern is shared by historians in Australia. Fictive History Historian Mark McKenna, in his essay, Writing the Past, argues that “fictive history” has become a new trend in Australia; he is unhappy with the historical authority bestowed on this form of writing and would like to see history restored to its rightful place. He argues that with the decline of academic history, novelists have taken over the historian’s role and fiction has become history (3). In sympathy with McKenna, author, historian and anthropologist Inga Clendinnen claims that “novelists have been doing their best to bump historians off the track” (16). McKenna accuses writers W.G. Sebald and David Malouf of supporting “the core myth of historical fiction: the belief that being there is what makes historical understanding possible.” Malouf argues, in a conversation with Helen Daniel in 1996, that: Our only way of grasping our history—and by history I really mean what has happened to us, and what determines what we are now and where we are now—the only way of really coming to terms with that is by people's entering into it in their imagination, not by the world of facts, but by being there. And the only thing really which puts you there in that kind of way is fiction. Poetry may do so, drama may do so, but it's mostly going to be fiction. It's when you have actually been there and become a character again in that world. (3) From this point of view, the historical novel plays an important role in our culture because it allows people to interact with the past in a meaningful way, something factual writing struggles to do. McKenna recognises that history is present in fiction and that history can contain fiction, but they should not be confused. Writers and critics have a responsibility towards their readers and must be clear that fiction is not history and should not be presented as such (10). He takes writer Kate Grenville to task for not respecting this difference. McKenna argues that Grenville has asserted in public that her historical novel The Secret River is history: “If ever there was a case of a novelist wanting her work to be taken seriously as history, it is Grenville” (5). The Secret River tells the story of early settlement along the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Grenville’s inspiration for the story emanated from her ancestor Solomon Wiseman’s life. The main protagonist, William Thornhill (loosely based on Wiseman), is convicted of theft in 1806 and transported to Australia. The novel depicts the poverty and despair in England at the time, and describes life in the new colony where Grenville explores the collision between the colonists and the Aborigines. McKenna knows that Grenville insists elsewhere that her book is not history, but he argues that this conflicts with what she said in interviews and he worries that “with such comments, it is little wonder that many people might begin to read fiction as history” (5). In an article on her website, Grenville refutes McKenna’s arguments, and those of Clendinnen: “Here it is in plain words: I don’t think The Secret River is history…Nor did I ever say that I thought my novel was history.” Furthermore, the acknowledgements in the back of the book state clearly that it is a work of fiction. She accuses the two above-mentioned historians of using quotes that “have been narrowly selected, taken out of context, and truncated” ("History and Fiction"). McKenna then goes on to say how shocked he was on hearing Grenville, in an interview with Ramona Koval on Radio National, make her now infamous comments about standing on a stepladder looking down at the history wars, and that he “felt like ringing the ABC and leaping to the defence of historians.” He accuses Grenville of elevating fiction above history as an “interpretive power” (6). Koval asked Grenville where her book stood in regard to the history wars; she answered: Mine would be up on a ladder, looking down at the history wars. . . I think the historians, and rightly so, have battled away about the details of exactly when and where and how many and how much, and they’ve got themselves into these polarised positions, and that’s fine, I think that’s what historians ought to be doing; constantly questioning the evidence and perhaps even each other. But a novelist can stand up on a stepladder and look down at this, outside the fray, [emphasis in original audio] and say there is another way to understand it. ("Interview") Grenville claims that she did not use the stepladder image to imply that her work was superior to history, but rather to convey a sense of being outside the battle raging between historians as an uninvolved observer, “an interested onlooker who made the mistake of climbing a stepladder rather than a couple of fruit-boxes to get a good view.” She goes on to argue that McKenna’s only sources in his essay, Writing the Past, are interviews and newspaper articles, which in themselves are fine, but she disagrees with how they have been used “uncritically, at face value, as authoritative evidence” ("History and Fiction"), much in contrast to the historian’s desire for authenticity in all sources. It appears that the troubles between history and fiction will continue for some time yet as traditional historians are bent on keeping faith with the tenets of their nineteenth century predecessors by defending history from the insurgence of fiction at all costs. While history and historical fiction share a common purpose in presenting the past, the novel deals with what is “real” and can tell the past as accurately or even in a more plausible way than history, which deals with what is “true”. However, the “dry-as-dust” historical approach to writing, and postmodernism’s questioning of historiography’s role in presenting the past, has contributed to a reassessment of the nature of history. Many historians recognise the need for change in the way they present their work, but as they have often doubted the worth of historical fiction, they are wary of the genre and the narrative techniques it employs. Those historians who do make an attempt to write differently have often been criticised by traditionalists. In Australia, historians such as McKenna and Clendinnen are worried by the incursion of historical fiction into their territory and are highly critical of novelists who claim their works are history. The overall picture that emerges is of two fields that are still struggling to clarify a number of core issues concerning the nature of both the historical novel and historiographical writing, and the role they play in portraying the past. References Brown, Joanne. "Historical Fiction or Fictionalized History? Problems for Writers of Historical Novels for Young Adults." ALAN Review 26.1 (1998). 1 March 2010 ‹http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/fall98/brown.html›. Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang. St Lucia, Qld: U of Queensland P, 2000. Clendinnen, Inga. "The History Question: Who Owns the Past?" Quarterly Essay 23 (2006): 1-72. Current, Richard. "Fiction as History: A Review Essay." Journal of Southern History 52.1 (1986): 77-90. De Piérola, José. "At the Edge of History: Notes for a Theory for the Historical Novel in Latin America." Romance Studies 26.2 (2008): 151-62. Demos, John. "Afterword: Notes from, and About, the History/Fiction Borderland." Rethinking History 9.2/3 (2005): 329-35. Den Heyer, Kent, and Alexandra Fidyk. "Configuring Historical Facts through Historical Fiction: Agency, Art-in-Fact, and Imagination as Stepping Stones between Then and Now." Educational Theory 57.2 (2007): 141-57. Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. Sydney: Picador, 2002. Grenville, Kate. “History and Fiction.” 2007. 19 July 2010 ‹http://kategrenville.com/The_Secret_River_History%20and%20Fiction›. ———. “Interview with Ramona Koval.” 17 July 2005. 26 July 2010 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s1414510.htm›. ———. The Secret River. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2006. Harlan, David. “Historical Fiction and the Future of Academic History.” Manifestos for History. Ed. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan and Alun Munslow. Abingdon, Oxon; N.Y.: Routledge, 2007. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Jenkins, Keith, Sue Morgan, and Alun Munslow. Manifestos for History. Abingdon, Oxon; N.Y.: Routledge, 2007. Lukács, György. The Historical Novel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Malouf, David. "Interview with Helen Daniel." Australian Humanities Review (Sep. 1996). McKenna, Mark. “Writing the Past: History, Literature & the Public Sphere in Australia.” Australian Financial Review (2005). 13 May 2010 ‹http://www.afraccess.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/search›. Nelson, Camilla. “Faking It: History and Creative Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses 11.2 (2007). 5 June 2010 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au›. Ricketson, Matthew. “Not Muddying, Clarifying: Towards Understanding the Boundaries between Fiction and Nonfiction.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses 14.2 (2010). 6 June 2011 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct10/ricketson.htm›. Rosenstone, Robert A. “Space for the Bird to Fly.” Manifestos for History. Eds. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan and Alun Munslow. Abingdon, Oxon; N.Y.: Routledge, 2007. 11-18. ———. Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988. Schama, Simon. Dead Certainties: (Unwarranted Speculations). 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Slotkin, Richard. “Fiction for the Purposes of History.” Rethinking History 9.2/3 (2005): 221-36. Southgate, Beverley C. History Meets Fiction. New York: Longman, Harlow, England, 2009. White, Hayden. “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality.” Rethinking History 9.2/3 (2005): 147-57.

Despite the now-traditional tendency of noir scholarship to call attention to the retrospective and constructed nature of this genre— James Naremore argues that film noir is best regarded as a “mythology”— one feature that has rarely come under question is its association with the city (2). Despite the existence of numerous rural noirs, the depiction of urban space is associated with this genre more consistently than any other element. Even in critical accounts that attempt to deconstruct the solidity of the noir genre, the city is left as an implicit inclusion, and the country, an implict exclusion. Naremore, for example, does not include the urban environment in a list of the central tenets of film noir that he calls into question: “nothing links together all the things described as noir—not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (10). Elizabeth Cowie identifies film noir a “fantasy,” whose “tenuous critical status” has been compensated for “by a tenacity of critical use” (121). As part of Cowie’s project, to revise the assumption that noirs are almost exclusively male-centered, she cites character types, visual style, and narrative tendencies, but never urban spaces, as familiar elements of noir that ought to be reconsidered. If the city is rarely tackled as an unnecessary or part-time element of film noir in discursive studies, it is often the first trait identified by critics in the kind of formative, characteristic-compiling studies that Cowie and Naremore work against.Andrew Dickos opens Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir with a list of noir’s key attributes. The first item is “an urban setting or at least an urban influence” (6). Nicholas Christopher maintains that “the city is the seedbed of film noir. […] However one tries to define or explain noir, the common denominator must always be the city. The two are inseparable” (37). Though the tendencies of noir scholars— both constructive and deconstructive— might lead readers to believe otherwise, rural locations figure prominently in a number of noir films. I will show that the noir genre is, indeed, flexible enough to encompass many films set predominantly or partly in rural locations. Steve Neale, who encourages scholars to work with genre terms familiar to original audiences, would point out that the rural noir is an academic discovery not an industry term, or one with much popular currency (166). Still, this does not lessen the critical usefulness of this subgenre, or its implications for noir scholarship.While structuralist and post-structuralist modes of criticism dominated film genre criticism in the 1970s and 80s, as Thomas Schatz has pointed out, these approaches often sacrifice close attention to film texts, for more abstract, high-stakes observations: “while there is certainly a degree to which virtually every mass-mediated cultural artifact can be examined from [a mythical or ideological] perspective, there appears to be a point at which we tend to lose sight of the initial object of inquiry” (100). Though my reading of these films sidesteps attention to social and political concerns, this article performs the no-less-important task of clarifying the textual features of this sub-genre. To this end, I will survey the tendencies of the rural noir more generally, mentioning more than ten films that fit this subgenre, before narrowing my analysis to a reading of Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948), Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949), They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1949) and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Robert Mitchum tries to escape his criminal life by settling in a small, mountain-side town in Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947). A foggy marsh provides a dramatic setting for the Bonnie and Clyde-like demise of lovers on the run in Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis, 1950). In The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), Sterling Hayden longs to return home after he is forced to abandon his childhood horse farm for a life of organised crime in the city. Rob Ryan plays a cop unable to control his violent impulses in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). He is re-assigned from New York City to a rural community up-state in hopes that a less chaotic environment will have a curative effect. The apple orchards of Thieves’ Highway are no refuge from networks of criminal corruption. In They Live By Night, a pair of young lovers, try to leave their criminal lives behind, hiding out in farmhouses, cabins, and other pastoral locations in the American South. Finally, the location of prisons explains a number of sequences set in spare, road-side locations such as those in The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956), The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953), and Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948). What are some common tendencies of the rural noir? First, they usually feature both rural and urban settings, which allows the portrayal of one to be measured against the other. What we see of the city structures the definition of the country, and vice versa. Second, the lead character moves between these two locations by driving. For criminals, the car is more essential for survival in the country than in the city, so nearly all rural noirs are also road movies. Third, nature often figures as a redemptive force for urbanites steeped in lives of crime. Fourth, the curative quality of the country is usually tied to a love interest in this location: the “nurturing woman” as defined by Janey Place, who encourages the protagonist to forsake his criminal life (60). Fifth, the country is never fully crime-free. In The Killer is Loose, for example, an escaped convict’s first victim is a farmer, whom he clubs before stealing his truck. The convict (Wendell Corey), then, easily slips through a motorcade with the farmer’s identification. Here, the sprawling countryside provides an effective cover for the killer. This farmland is not an innocent locale, but the criminal’s safety-net. In films where a well-intentioned lead attempts to put his criminal life behind him by moving to a remote location, urban associates have little trouble tracking him down. While the country often appears, to protagonists like Jeff in Out of the Past or Bowie in They Live By Night, as an ideal place to escape from crime, as these films unfold, violence reaches the countryside. If these are similar points, what are some differences among rural noirs? First, there are many differences by degree among the common elements listed above. For instance, some rural noirs present their location with unabashed romanticism, while others critique the idealisation of these locations; some “nurturing women” are complicit with criminal activity, while others are entirely innocent. Second, while noir films are commonly known for treating similar urban locations, Los Angeles in particular, these films feature a wide variety of locations: Out of the Past and Thieves’ Highway take place in California, the most common setting for rural noirs, but On Dangerous Ground is set in northern New England, They Live by Night takes place in the Depression-era South, Moonrise in Southern swampland, and the most dynamic scene of The Asphalt Jungle is in rural Kentucky. Third, these films also vary considerably in the balance of settings. If the three typical locations of the rural noir are the country, the city, and the road, the distribution of these three locations varies widely across these films. The location of The Asphalt Jungle matches the title until its dramatic conclusion. The Hitch-hiker, arguably a rural noir, is set in travelling cars, with just brief stops in the barren landscape outside. Two of the films I analyse, They Live By Night and Moonrise are set entirely in the country; a remarkable exception to the majority of films in this subgenre. There are only two other critical essays on the rural noir. In “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir,” Jonathan F. Bell contextualises the rural noir in terms of post-war transformations of the American landscape. He argues that these films express a forlorn faith in the agrarian myth while the U.S. was becoming increasingly developed and suburbanised. That is to say, the rural noir simultaneously reflects anxiety over the loss of rural land, but also the stubborn belief that the countryside will always exist, if the urbanite needs it as a refuge. Garry Morris suggests the following equation as the shortest way to state the thematic interest of this genre: “Noir = industrialisation + (thwarted) spirituality.” He attributes much of the malaise of noir protagonists to the inhospitable urban environment, “far from [society’s] pastoral and romantic and spiritual origins.” Where Bell focuses on nine films— Detour (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Out of the Past (1947), Key Largo (1948), Gun Crazy (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Split Second (1953), and Killer’s Kiss (1955)— Morris’s much shorter article includes just The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Gun Crazy. Of the four films I discuss, only On Dangerous Ground has previously been treated as part of this subgenre, though it has never been discussed alongside Nicholas Ray’s other rural noir. To further the development of the project that these authors have started— the formation of a rural noir corpus— I propose the inclusion of three additional films in this subgenre: Moonrise (1948), They Live by Night (1949), and Thieves’ Highway (1949). With both On Dangerous Ground and They Live by Night to his credit, Nicholas Ray has the distinction of being the most prolific director of rural noirs. In They Live by Night, two young lovers, Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), attempt to escape from their established criminal lives. Twenty-three year old Bowie has just been released from juvenile prison and finds rural Texas refreshing: “Out here, the air smells different,” he says. He meets Keechie through her father, a small time criminal organiser who would be happy to keep her secluded for life. When one of Bowie’s accomplices, Chicamaw (Howard DaSilva), shoots a policeman after a robbing a bank with Bowie, the young couple is forced to run. Foster Hirsch calls They Live by Night “a genre rarity, a sentimental noir” (34). The naïve blissfulness of their affection is associated with the primitive settings they navigate. Though Bowie and Keechie are the most sympathetic protagonists of any rural noir, this is no safeguard against an inevitable, characteristically noir demise. Janey Place writes, “the young lovers are doomed, but the possibility of their love transcends and redeems them both, and its failure criticises the urbanised world that will not let them live” (63). As indicated here, the country offers the young lovers refuge for some time, and their bond is depicted as wonderfully strong, but it is doomed by the stronger force of the law.Raymond Williams discusses how different characteristics are associated with urban and rural spaces:On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved center: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. (1) They Live By Night breaks down these dichotomies, showing the persistence of crime rooted in rural areas.Bowie desires to “get squared around” and live a more natural life with Keechie. Williams’ country adjectives— “peace, innocence, and simple virtue”— describe the nature of this relationship perfectly. Yet, criminal activity, usually associated with the city, has an overwhelmingly strong presence in this region and their lives. Bowie, following the doomed logic of many a crime film character, plans to launch a new, more honest life with cash raised in a heist. Keechie recognises the contradictions in this plan: “Fine way to get squared around, teaming with them. Stealing money and robbing banks. You’ll get in so deep trying to get squared, they’ll have enough to keep you in for two life times.” For Bowie, crime and the pursuit of love are inseparably bound, refuting the illusion of the pure and innocent countryside personified by characters like Mary Malden in On Dangerous Ground and Ann Miller in Out of the Past.In Ray’s other rural noir, On Dangerous Ground, a lonely, angry, and otherwise burned out cop, Wilson (Rob Ryan), finds both love and peace in his time away from the city. While on his up-state assignment, Wilson meets Mary Walden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who lives a secluded life miles away from this already desolate, rural community. Mary has a calming influence on Wilson, and fits well within Janey Place’s notion of the archetypal nurturing woman in film noir: “The redemptive woman often represents or is part of a primal connection with nature and/or with the past, which are safe, static states rather than active, exciting ones, but she can sometimes offer the only transcendence possible in film noir” (63).If, as Colin McArthur observes, Ray’s characters frequently seek redemption in rural locales— “[protagonists] may reject progress and modernity; they may choose to go or are sent into primitive areas. […] The journeys which bring them closer to nature may also offer them hope of salvation” (124) — the conclusions of On Dangerous Ground versus They Live By Night offer two markedly different resolutions to this narrative. Where Bowie and Keechie’s life on the lam cannot be sustained, On Dangerous Ground, against the wishes of its director, portrays a much more romanticised version of pastoral life. According to Andrew Dickos, “Ray wanted to end the film on the ambivalent image of Jim Wilson returning to the bleak city,” after he had restored order up-state (132). The actual ending is more sentimental. Jim rushes back north to be with Mary. They passionately kiss in close-up, cueing an exuberant orchestral score as The End appears over a slow tracking shot of the majestic, snow covered landscape. In this way, On Dangerous Ground overturns the usual temporal associations of rural versus urban spaces. As Raymond Williams identifies, “The common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future” (297). For Wilson, by contrast, city life was no longer sustainable and rurality offers his best means for a future. Leo Marx noted in a variety of American pop culture, from Mark Twain to TV westerns and magazine advertising, a “yearning for a simpler, more harmonious style of life, and existence ‘closer to nature,’ that is the psychic root of all pastoralism— genuine and spurious” (Marx 6). Where most rural noirs expose the agrarian myth as a fantasy and a sham, On Dangerous Ground, exceptionally, perpetuates it as actual and effectual. Here, a bad cop is made good with a few days spent in a sparsely populated area and with a woman shaped by her rural upbringing.As opposed to On Dangerous Ground, where the protagonist’s movement from city to country matches his split identity as a formerly corrupt man wishing to be pure, Frank Borzage’s B-film Moonrise (1948) is located entirely in rural or small-town locations. Set in the fictional Southern town of Woodville, which spans swamps, lushly wooded streets and aging Antebellum mansions, the lead character finds good and bad within the same rural location and himself. Dan (Dane Clark) struggles to escape his legacy as the son of a murderer. This conflict is irreparably heightened when Dan kills a man (who had repeatedly teased and bullied him) in self-defence. The instability of Dan’s moral compass is expressed in the way he treats innocent elements of the natural world: flies, dogs, and, recalling Out of the Past, a local deaf boy. He is alternately cruel and kind. Dan is finally redeemed after seeking the advice of a black hermit, Mose (Rex Ingram), who lives in a ramshackle cabin by the swamp. He counsels Dan with the advice that men turn evil from “being lonesome,” not for having “bad blood.” When Dan, eventually, decides to confess to his crime, the sheriff finds him tenderly holding a search hound against a bucolic, rural backdrop. His complete comfortability with the landscape and its creatures finally allows Dan to reconcile the film’s opening opposition. He is no longer torturously in between good and evil, but openly recognises his wrongs and commits to do good in the future. If I had to select just a single shot to illustrate that noirs are set in rural locations more often than most scholarship would have us believe, it would be the opening sequence of Moonrise. From the first shot, this film associates rural locations with criminal elements. The credit sequence juxtaposes pooling water with an ominous brass score. In this disorienting opening, the camera travels from an image of water, to a group of men framed from the knees down. The camera dollies out and pans left, showing that these men, trudging solemnly, are another’s legal executioners. The frame tilts upward and we see a man hung in silhouette. This dense shot is followed by an image of a baby in a crib, also shadowed, the water again, and finally the execution scene. If this sequence is a thematic montage, it can also be discussed, more simply, as a series of establishing shots: a series of images that, seemingly, could not be more opposed— a baby, a universal symbol of innocence, set against the ominous execution, cruel experience— are paired together by virtue of their common location. The montage continues, showing that the baby is the son of the condemned man. As Dan struggles with the legacy of his father throughout the film, this opening shot continues to inform our reading of this character, split between the potential for good or evil.What a baby is to Moonrise, or, to cite a more familiar reference, what the insurance business is to many a James M. Cain roman noir, produce distribution is to Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949). The apple, often a part of wholesome American myths, is at the centre of this story about corruption. Here, a distribution network that brings Americans this hearty, simple product is connected with criminal activity and violent abuses of power more commonly portrayed in connection with cinematic staples of organised crime such as bootlegging or robbery. This film portrays bad apples in the apple business, showing that no profit driven enterprise— no matter how traditional or rural— is beyond the reach of corruption.Fitting the nature of this subject, numerous scenes in the Dassin film take place in the daylight (in addition to darkness), and in the countryside (in addition to the city) as we move between wine and apple country to the market districts of San Francisco. But if the subject and setting of Thieves’ Highway are unusual for a noir, the behaviour of its characters is not. Spare, bright country landscapes form the backdrop for prototypical noir behaviour: predatory competition for money and power.As one would expect of a film noir, the subject of apple distribution is portrayed with dynamic violence. In the most exciting scene of the film, a truck careens off the road after a long pursuit from rival sellers. Apples scatter across a hillside as the truck bursts into flames. This scene is held in a long-shot, as unscrupulous thugs gather the produce for sale while the unfortunate driver burns to death. Here, the reputedly innocent American apple is subject to cold-blooded, profit-maximizing calculations as much as the more typical topics of noir such as blackmail, fraud, or murder. Passages on desolate roads and at apple orchards qualify Thieves’ Highway as a rural noir; the dark, cynical manner in which capitalist enterprise is treated is resonant with nearly all film noirs. Thieves’ Highway follows a common narrative pattern amongst rural noirs to gradually reveal rural spaces as connected to criminality in urban locations. Typically, this disillusioning fact is narrated from the perspective of a lead character who first has a greater sense of safety in rural settings but learns, over the course of the story, to be more wary in all locations. In Thieves’, Nick’s hope that apple-delivery might earn an honest dollar (he is the only driver to treat the orchard owners fairly) gradually gives way to an awareness of the inevitable corruption that has taken over this enterprise at all levels of production, from farmer, to trucker, to wholesaler, and thus, at all locations, the country, the road, and the city.Between this essay, and the previous work of Morris and Bell on the subject, we are developing a more complete survey of the rural noir. Where Bell’s and Morris’s essays focus more resolutely on rural noirs that relied on the contrast of the city versus the country— which, significantly, was the first tendency of this subgenre that I observed— Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate that this genre can work entirely apart from the city. From start to finish, these films take place in small towns and rural locations. As opposed to Out of the Past, On Dangerous Ground, or The Asphalt Jungle, characters are never pulled back to, nor flee from, an urban life of crime. Instead, vices that are commonly associated with the city have a free-standing life in the rural locations that are often thought of as a refuge from these harsh elements. If both Bell and Morris study the way that rural noirs draw differences between the city and country, two of the three films I add to the subgenre constitute more complete rural noirs, films that work wholly outside urban locations, not just in contrast with it. Bell, like me, notes considerable variety in rural noirs locations, “desert landscapes, farms, mountains, and forests all qualify as settings for consideration,” but he also notes that “Diverse as these landscapes are, this set of films uses them in surprisingly like-minded fashion to achieve a counterpoint to the ubiquitous noir city” (219). In Bell’s analysis, all nine films he studies, feature significant urban segments. He is, in fact, so inclusive as to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss as a rural noir even though it does not contain a single frame shot or set outside of New York City. Rurality is evoked only as a possibility, as alienated urbanite Davy (Jamie Smith) receives letters from his horse-farm-running relatives. Reading these letters offers Davy brief moments of respite from drudgerous city spaces such as the subway and his cramped apartment. In its emphasis on the centrality of rural locations, my project is more similar to David Bell’s work on the rural in horror films than to Jonathan F. Bell’s work on the rural noir. David Bell analyses the way that contemporary horror films work against a “long tradition” of the “idyllic rural” in many Western texts (95). As opposed to works “from Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman to contemporary television shows like Northern Exposure and films such as A River Runs Through It or Grand Canyon” in which the rural is positioned as “a restorative to urban anomie,” David Bell analyses films such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that depict “a series of anti-idyllic visions of the rural” (95). Moonrise and They Live By Night, like these horror films, portray the crime and the country as coexistent spheres at the same time that the majority of other popular culture, including noirs like Killer’s Kiss or On Dangerous Ground, portray them as mutually exclusive.To use a mode of generic analysis developed by Rick Altman, the rural noir, while preserving the dominant syntax of other noirs, presents a remarkably different semantic element (31). Consider the following description of the genre, from the introduction to Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide: “The darkness that fills the mirror of the past, which lurks in a dark corner or obscures a dark passage out of the oppressively dark city, is not merely the key adjective of so many film noir titles but the obvious metaphor for the condition of the protagonist’s mind” (Silver and Ward, 4). In this instance, the narrative elements, or syntax, of film noir outlined by Silver and Ward do not require revision, but the urban location, a semantic element, does. Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate the sustainability of the aforementioned syntactic elements— the dark, psychological experience of the leads and their inescapable criminal past— apart from the familiar semantic element of the city.The rural noir must also cause us to reconsider— beyond rural representations or film noir— more generally pitched genre theories. Consider the importance of place to film genre, the majority of which are defined by a typical setting: for melodramas, it is the family home, for Westerns, the American west, and for musicals, the stage. Thomas Schatz separates American genres according to their setting, between genres which deal with “determinate” versus “indeterminate” space:There is a vital distinction between kinds of generic settings and conflicts. Certain genres […] have conflicts that, indigenous to the environment, reflect the physical and ideological struggle for its control. […] Other genres have conflicts that are not indigenous to the locale but are the results of the conflict between the values, attitudes, and actions of its principal characters and the ‘civilised’ setting they inhabit. (26) Schatz discusses noirs, along with detective films, as films which trade in “determinate” settings, limited to the space of the city. The rural noir slips between Schatz’s dichotomy, moving past the space of the city, but not into the civilised, tame settings of the genres of “indeterminate spaces.” It is only fitting that a genre whose very definition lies in its disruption of Hollywood norms— trading high- for low-key lighting, effectual male protagonists for helpless ones, and a confident, coherent worldview for a more paranoid, unstable one would, finally, be able to accommodate a variation— the rural noir— that would seem to upset one of its central tenets, an urban locale. Considering the long list of Hollywood standards that film noirs violated, according to two of its original explicators, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton— “a logical action, an evident distinction between good and evil, well-defined characters with clear motives, scenes that are more spectacular than brutal, a heroine who is exquisitely feminine and a hero who is honest”— it should, perhaps, not be so surprising that the genre is flexible enough to accommodate the existence of the rural noir after all (14). AcknowledgmentsIn addition to M/C Journal's anonymous readers, the author would like to thank Corey Creekmur, Mike Slowik, Barbara Steinson, and Andrew Gorman-Murray for their helpful suggestions. ReferencesAltman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 27-41.The Asphalt Jungle. Dir. John Huston. MGM/UA, 1950.Bell, David. “Anti-Idyll: Rural Horror.” Contested Countryside Cultures. Eds. Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London, Routledge, 1997. 94-108.Bell, Jonathan F. “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir.” Architecture and Film. Ed. Mark Lamster. New York: Princeton Architectural P, 2000. 217-230.Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir. Ed. Joan Copjec. New York: Verso, 1993. 121-166.Dickos, Andrew. Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002.Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. London: BFI, 1972.Moonrise. Dir. Frank Borzage. Republic, 1948.Morris, Gary. “Noir Country: Alien Nation.” Bright Lights Film Journal Nov. 2006. 13. Jun. 2008 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/54/noircountry.htm Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1998.Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley, C.A.: U of California P, 2008.Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 160-184.On Dangerous Ground. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1951.Out of the Past. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. RKO, 1947.Place, Janey. “Women in Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 1999. 47-68.Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House, 1981.Schatz, Thomas. “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 92-102.Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 1980.They Live by Night. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1949.Thieves’ Highway. Dir. Jules Dassin. Fox, 1949.Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.